Download Smoke with Fire: Financial Crises, Institutional

Smoke with Fire: Financial Crises, Institutional
Reform, and the Future of EU Democracy
Federica Genovese∗
Gerald Schneider†
September 14, 2014
The handling of the recent sovereign debt crisis in Europe has raised fears that decision
making among European countries has become less democratic, and that technocrats now
call the shots in the European Union (EU). In this article we confront this view by proposing
an alternative theory for the effects of financial crises in this supranational organization. We
argue that national parliaments in Europe refrain from demanding control of EU institutions
during a financial crisis if they think their request may undermine the credibility of governments in other member states their policies depend on. A crisis should then depress demand
for political reforms in monetarily independent countries that are in financial trouble, but
not in countries whose fiscal and monetary status rely on the economic reputation of the
Union as a whole. We show evidence in support of our theory with qualitative evaluations
and econometric regressions, using different types of data for the years between 1950 and
2010. Our findings let us reconsider that the recent Eurocrisis has depleted the power of the
European legislatures.
∗
Stanford University; [email protected]
University of Konstanz; [email protected]. Previous versions of this paper have
been presented at the meeting of the 2012 German Political Science Association (DVWP) at the University of
Tübingen and at research seminars at the Free University Berlin, Leiden University, WZB, Tel Aviv University
and the Institute for Advance Studies Toulouse. We thank the participants and Zareh Asatryan, Simon Hix,
Martin Höppner, Kai Konrad, Rhea Molato, John Roemer, Thomas Sattler, Tal Sadeh, Enrico Spolaore,
Aneta Spendzharova, Bernard Steunenberg, Jean Tirole and Vera Tröger for constructive comments. We
are also grateful to Alexander Bräunig for research assistance and Cristina Bodea, Tal Sadeh and Thomas
Winzen for sharing data. Replication data and files will be found at the homepage of the first author.
†
“There’s no smoke without fire,
Baby, baby you’re a liar”
– Duffy, Smoke with Fire
The political economy literature disagrees over the conditions under which a country introduces political reforms following a severe economic shock. A main proposition within
this body of research boils down to the expectation that governments do not launch policy
reforms without the pressure from crises. Rodrik (1996: 27) pointed out that this thesis
borders on tautology, arguing, “[t]hat policy reform should follow crises, then, is no more
surprising than smoke following fire.” Others have, however, uncovered the considerable delay in which many countries implement urgent policies (Alesina and Drazen 1991), invoking
at least for a certain period of time the possibility of ‘smoke-free fire’ and thus crises that do
not lead to any real reforms. Indeed, at the beginning of the recent European sovereign debt
crisis Greek decision makers provoked several wars of nerves until they reluctantly accepted
some of the austerity measures designed by the European Union (EU) and the International
Monetary Fund.
The fact that Greece and other EU member governments have deferred deadlines and
postponed decisions on key austerity measures has reinvigorated the fear that the Union
has reached its nadir, having fallen victim to a final bout of what Giersch (1985) had described as ‘Eurosclerosis.’ The post–2008 political inertia was supposedly dictated by a few
governments, which prevented the organization from introducing reforms that would enable
it to effectively deal with crises. For some, the end of integration seemed closer than ever
before in the history of the ‘EU project.’ The renewed debate over the alleged democratic
deficit in Europe accompanied the pessimistic view that supranational organizations are unable to confront economic challenges successfully. Intellectuals and social exponents have
complained that the handling of the crisis undermined European democracy, identifying a
trend towards technocratic and even autocratic decision making.1
1
In 2012 prominent sociologist Anthony Giddens noted, “what about the fate of democracy in all this?
Those who have assumed the mantle of the saviors of the EU – Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy, together
with ‘technocrats’ in Greece and Italy – are largely bypassing the decision-making agencies of the union”
1
Addressing the question whether ‘smoke follows fires’ in light of these concerns, this
paper examines the institutional consequences of financial collapses in Europe. We present
an argument that links together lessons from the literature on the effects of crises on policy,
coalition building and unanimity voting, seeking to explain the trajectory of supranational
decision making in the continent from the post–war years until today. On the one hand,
remarkable integration and progressive legalization have occurred in the aftermath of crises
in modern Europe. This observation leads us to believe the EU is a supra–nationalist democracy with the capacity to introduce institutional changes that are more universally beneficial
than the status quo in the wake of a financial crisis. On the other hand, the organization
gathers states with heterogeneous sensitivities to economic and political change. Do these
diverging preferences challenge democratic reforms? We will argue that the majority of EU
states do not demand reforms at the outbreak of crises, because they fear the political costs
resented in weaker countries upon which the Union depends. So, even if countries have domestic incentives to request more reforms of the EU, they may not pursue them at the time
of a crisis in order not to shame the political and economic credibility of the Union.
We identify two dimensions where we think the main institutional reforms in Europe
should be foreseen. A first dimension regards the degree to which governments are enabled
to delegate decision making power to autonomous economic agencies. Central banks are key
agents, because they are in charge of maintaining public confidence in trade, savings and
investment in weakened payments system (Kapstein 1992; Bernhard et al 2002). The second dimension deals with the extent to which the national parliaments are able to restrain
executive decision-making and rebalance political rights (Finke 2009; Saalfeld 2005). While
these two types of reform share the goal of protecting legislatures and curtailing executives’
discretion, they are at loggerheads with each other, as empowering independent economic
agents like the central bank lowers the control possibilities of the legislative actors, and vice
versa. In the EU the trade-off is made more difficult by the two legislative levels, and the fact
(Giddens 2012). Fearing the “real possibility of a failure of the European project,” Jürgen Habermas (2011:
97) advanced the proposal of establishing a European transnational democracy.
2
that the supranational parliament can constrain the degree of political scrutiny of national
legislatures on Brussels. We contend that financial crises in the EU allow national systems
with monetary independence to demands for more political scrutiny and direct oversight institutions unless a crisis breaks out. Oppositely, we claim that more bounded countries, such
as the members of the European Monetary Union (EMU), face fewer collective incentives to
press for political shifts, because they share a common credibility in the time of a crisis.
We test our theory leveraging political and economic data between 1950 and 2010.
In line with our expectation, our empirical evidence indicates that historical crises have
empowered economic agents like national central banks, including the banks of monetarily
independent countries in 2008-10. However, more integrated states show no significant differences in demand for political reforms whether they suffered from a crisis or not. The
results are compelling and have important implications for democracy and delegation in the
continent after the recent Eurocrisis. We conclude by discussing the implications of the
distributional concerns over policy participation for the future of monetary integration and
political governance in the EU.
Financial Crises and Institutional Reforms
The New Debate on the Democratic Deficit
One of the key features in the history of the European Union is the stop-and-go nature in
which the organization has institutionally evolved over time (Schneider and Cederman 1994).
Observers have frequently described the periods in which attempts to widen and deepen the
process of European integration failed as crises that might herald the end of the integration
process altogether. The inability of the European Council – and thus the intergovernmental
forum of the Heads of States and Prime Ministers – to deal with the 2008 sovereign debt crisis
in a timely and effective manner has reinvigorated such concerns. Several European leaders
took up the doomsday rhetoric of earlier periods of stagnation and tried to convince their
3
electorates that a failure to resolve the debt crisis would result in an irreparable breakdown
of the European institutions and the escalation towards a situation in which the specter of
a European war would loom large.
While some saw such developments as a welcome chance to reduce the integration
project to the alleged core function of a free-trade area, leading European intellectuals rather
believed that more formalized cooperation is needed to tackle the problems of the integration process. Habermas (2011) vigorously voiced the latter position, complaining that one
institutional consequence of the crises, the strengthening of ‘executive federalism,’ has led to
an intergovernmentalist hollowing out of democracy in Europe. This endangers, in his view,
the ambition to establish transnational cosmopolitanism through the integration project.
Streeck (2011, 2013), by contrast, believes that the interests of the financial industry will
prevent the organization from becoming more democratic. In his view, “[m]ore than ever,
economic power seems today to have become political power, while citizens appear to be
almost entirely stripped of their democratic defences and their capacity to impress upon the
political economy interests and demands that are incommensurable with those of capital
owners” (Streeck 2011: 29).
The claim that the financial crises within the EU have undermined the legitimacy of
decision making in the supranational institution has re-launched the discussion over the socalled ‘democratic deficit’ and the measures that could be taken to resolve it.2 Although we
do not want to rehash here the rich discussion over this continuing challenge, a key disagreement is worth identifying. On the most controversial end, Moravcsik (2002) and Majone
(1996, 1998) contend that there is no real deficit as the ambition of the integration project is
a more technocratic one. The EU, in other words, is a highly efficient bureaucratic machine
that produces efficient technical solutions in less politicized arenas. A lack of democracy is,
therefore, not really a problem for the organization. Føllesdal and Hix (2006), by contrast,
2
In a review of Streeck (2013), Habermas (2013) deplores the alleged wish to return to the nation-state
‘corral’ of the 1960s and 1970s. His insistence on an EU solution has inspired a plethora of projects, including
the “Manifesto for re-building Europe from the bottom-up” which called for “a European Year of Volunteering
for Everyone” (http://manifest-europa.eu/?lang=en,13/9/2012). Accessed on 26 April 2014.
4
contend that the decision making power of the European Union reach far beyond a level
where only technocratic expertise is required and that decisions over these issues are done
by government delegates who cannot base their position on a clear popular mandate. Hix
(2008) has therefore called for a strengthening of democracy in the EU through open contestation for public offices, more transparent decision making in the Commission and a move
away from consensus in parliamentary agenda setting.
These different positions are hardly reconcilable as they are based on diverging understandings of whether decisions by independent technocrats or by democratically legitimized
actors dominate day–to–day affairs in the supranational organization. Nonetheless, we agree
with Hix (2008) that decisions of the organization have severe redistributive consequences
that require democratic control and transparency. One can obviously maintain that some
of the ideas advanced in the discussion on the democratic deficit – like the creation of a
European public sphere or the introduction of EU-wide referenda – would be appropriate
means to legitimize EU decision making. However, the realization of such projects is not
imminent so that we need to examine how decisions on financial crises are made and whether
there is room to increase the legitimacy and efficiency of these choices.
The Consequences of Crises in a Supranational Polity
Our entity of interest is a supranational union that shares few similarities with other types
of political organizations. And yet, despite the fact that the political ramifications of crises
in Europe go beyond the borders of a single country, some aspects of the constitutional
dilemma in the aftermath of economic shocks are comparable to the consequences in other
polities. One general claim in the literature is that economic shocks are a key driver of political liberalization. This view is supported by careful studies of cross–national transitions.3
3
For example, Ulfelder (2009) notes that “poor economic growth produces declines in living standards
that spurred popular rebellion. Threatened by these uprisings and often hobbled by an accompanying fiscal
crisis that also undermined the loyalty of key elites, dictators sometimes respond with political liberalization”
(Ulfelder 2009: 28). Similarly, Acharya (1999, 432) suggests “that economic downturns can precipitate the
breakdown of authoritarian rule” based a survey of south Asian countries after the economic crisis of the
late 1990s.
5
There is also evidence that countries increase the discretion of their central monetary
agencies in the wake of financial crises. An encompassing empirical study by Crowe and
Meade (2008: 766) suggests that past inflationary experience increases central bank independence, suggesting that “reform has been prompted by the failure of past anti-inflation.”
A further important determinant of this form of institutional change is political stress, which
in itself might be spurred by economic crises. While inflation negatively affects the risk of
growing central bank independence, an index of political instability is positively associated
with it (Polillo and Guillén 2005).4 Bernhard (2002) furthermore shows that governments
which have to fear to be punished for a mismanagement of the economy have an increased
tendency to delegate more power to central banks.
These crisis arguments are at loggerheads with the modernization literature which links
the prospects of democratization to economic development.5 Evidently, we should not expect financial crises to always result in institutional reform. Policy transitions can be slow,
stalled or even blackmailed as most reforms inevitably pose the question of which group
should shoulder the costs of the adaptation (Alesina and Drazen 1991). However, the social
costs of a crisis can sometimes be so overpowering that they enable rather than prevent
drastic policy reforms.6 Several empirical studies support this optimistic expectation. For
example, Frankel (2005) shows for developing countries that the risk that a central banker
is held accountable (losing her job) after a currency crisis is over 60 per cent higher in
4
The negative impact of inflation on central bank independence could be a consequence of a simultaneity
problem. Hielscher and Markwardt (2012) for instance demonstrate that only significant steps towards
further independence lower inflation and that the leeway granted to the central banks reforms has to be
embedded into a political system with high quality institutions to make the reforms effective.
5
Recent tests of this thesis, originally advanced by Lipset (1959), have led to inconclusive results (Prezeworski and Limongi 1997, Prezeworski et al. 2000, Epstein et al. 2006, Acemoglu et al. 2008). Kennedy
(2010: 785) bluntly notes that “[e]conomic development generally increases the stability of authoritarian
regimes.”
6
Along these lines, Drazen and Grilli (1993: 598) claim that major economic distortions can be ‘beneficial’
and may induce necessary economic reforms: “the extreme welfare loss that each agent suffers in a crisis
dwarfs the loss he may associate with an unfavorable distribution of the burden of a major policy change.”
Note however that this conjecture is in considerable contrast with some historical work that traces the
authoritarian transitions of the 1930s to the Great Depression (e.g. Kindleberger 1986). More recent
comparative studies demonstrate that not only economic factors contributed to the rise of fascism in the
Western Europe of the early 1930s (e.g. de Bromhead et al. 2013).
6
that year in comparison to a less turbulent year. Of course, firing the underlings does not
completely banish the danger for a government leader to be forced out of office.7 Sacking
the allegedly responsible policy makers is nevertheless a short-term response to an economic
crisis. A more long-term response would consist of institutional changes that reduce the risk
of future financial crises. On this end, some research has indicated that economic crises in
liberalized countries go hand in hand with more political accountability and governmental
transparency.8
While the comparative scholarship lends important lessons to our understanding of the
relation between crises, policy and democracy across countries, we recognize that some of
these assumptions do not necessarily have to hold in the context of the EU. The European Union is still a predominantly intergovernmental institution that decides on reactions
to fiscal crises through negotiations between the heads of government and largely independent agencies such as the European Central Bank (ECB). Consequently, our discussion of
the institutional consequences of financial crises in the EU needs to focus on the interrelated questions of how much parliamentary scrutiny the intergovernmental decision making
should receive and how independent the central bank shall be. These two questions have
been separately raised in recent comparative EU literature.9 Here we link them in order to
construct theoretical expectations on the trade-offs between economic reforms and political
accountability in the EU after a financial crisis.
7
According to Frankel’s calculation, this risk is more than 30 percent higher following the devaluation in
the preceding year compared to a normal year.
8
The countries where crises are more strongly correlated with democratization are those with sizeable
investment flows and high stability goals, in other words states that are both committed to integration in
the international banking system and domestic stability (Bordo and Schwartz 1997).
9
See, for example, Moravcsik (2012) on the politics of EU banking, and Winzen (2013) and de Wilde
(2014) on the attitudes of national parliaments towards the EU institutional process.
7
How do Crises affect Institutions in the EU?
We generally expect that citizens who suffer from the negative effects of financial turmoil
will try to punish their leaders for the hardship they have to endure.10 However, citizens
should not automatically punish leaders for economic hardship if the causes of the crisis are
blurry, as it has often been the case since the end of the world wars. Without being able
to directly account for the originator of the economic troubles, the electoral consequences
of severe austerity measures in developed democracies may be overall small (Alesina et al.
2011). We think this holds true at the level of the EU, where supranational elections are still
far from being an equivalent delegation process like their national counterparts.11 Therefore,
we believe there are indirect mechanisms through which politicians can pull the strings of
EU institutions, although at some conditions that we address in what follows.
We identify two alternative chances for reform at the onset of a crisis. On one front,
in the aftermath of a crisis citizens should ask for institutional reforms that limit the costs
of governmental policies, constrain the role of governments in the economy, and improve the
position of technocratic actors such as the central bankers. The second option is demanding
more legislative control and more direct delegation. We now discuss the incentives that come
with each of the two options, and how crises may influence the set of preferences for these
two types of reforms.
10
The literature provides compelling evidence in support of this expectation. Bueno de Mesquita et al.
(2003) provide solid evidence that leaders who have not been economically successful face a higher chance of
being outvoted or overthrown. Similarly, Smith (2008: 792) argues that democratization helps pressurized
leaders to find a compromise between the competing demands of the supporting political elite and the citizens
as “increases in coalition size shift the policy focus of the winning coalition closer to the policy goals of those
outside of the coalition.” Moreover, Stasavage (2011) shows that the development of public credit tends to
accompany the development of representative institutions.
11
The average turnout in national elections in the funding European countries is more
than 15 percent higher than the turnout of the past EU Parliament elections, according
to
EurActiv,
2014,
http://www.euractiv.com/sections/eu-elections-2014/
slightly-higher-election-turnout-averted-big-disaster-302383.
8
Effect of Crises on Economic Reforms: Central Banking
The international politics of central banks are bound to the ‘trilemma in history’ (Obstfeld
et al. 2004), in which the autonomous monetary policy of central banks negates either the
choice of a fixed exchange rate or the benefits of free international capital mobility. Various macroeconomic decisions traceable to this trilemma featured across Europe before the
establishment of the European Monetary Union (EMU). In a Special Issue of International
Organization, Frieden (2002) shows that domestic arrangements determined variation of
currency policies in European countries before the Maastricht Treaty, especially when more
independent agencies decreased the need for anti–inflationary credibility associated with
pegged currencies. In the same Special Issue, Bernhard et al (2002) note that “[d]elegation
to a conservative central bank forces a trade-off between lower inflation and output stabilization: the more conservative the central banker, the less she stabilizes output in the face
of unanticipated disturbances, especially under supply shocks” (p. 14).
We second this theory that increasing the agency of central bankers allows countries to
maintain international credibility, especially when assets must be liquidated quickly in the aftermath of a crisis. Following Broz (2002), we also believe that democracies in particular use
changes to central bank independence (CBI) to maintain their cross–national investments,
because their banks are overall more credible than the ones in autocracies. Given the strong
movements towards democratization in the modern history of the EU member countries, we
expect European governments to have a high propensity to increase financial transparency
in the aftermath of a crisis. This transparency is equivalent to delegating economic decisions
to autonomous central bankers.
While we argue that this mechanism should hold for independent European countries,
we believe it may not be in place for countries that entered the EMU starting in 1993,
after the Maastricht Treaty. As a condition for joining the common currency, the Treaty
imposed significant strengthening of the independence of central banks. This proposal followed the logic that the principal benefit of fixing European exchange rates was facilitation
9
of cross-border trade within the EU. Hence, it was necessary that countries agreed to the
loss of ability to use currency policy. Obviously the negotiations of the EMU Treaty were
characterized by different views. Countries with harder currencies like Germany debated
the importance for contained inflation and low interest rates. By contrast, in countries with
weaker currencies politicians saw monetary union as a means to commit themselves to credible cross-border investment and an ‘optimal currency.’ But as Moravskic (2012) points out,
a reason for monetary integration was precisely a strong concern for economic instability in
Europe in the 1970s. Spain and Italy, among others, embraced the combination of CBI and
free capital flow at the cost of flexible monetary policies at a time when currency and debt
crises were threatening their trade. Ultimately the Maastricht Treaty ‘artificially’ reduced
the variation of central bank independence in EMU countries. Consequently, all EMU countries had no more domestic freedom to set the level of independence of central banks, not
even at the time of the 2008 crisis.
Hypothesis 1: Financial crises have increased CBI in European countries after the war,
but had no effect on CBI in EMU countries after the Maastricht Treaty.
From the above discussion it follows that, under the Maastricht framework, a country faced
with a spillover crisis would have to act by pushing down economic activity through scarce
resources. The decision to trade off fixed CBI levels with tight policies was natural to
Germany, where the delegation of power to the central bank had been solidified since 1958.
However, it was a challenge for other European governments. Delegation of powers to the CB
does not enhance credibility if it can be easily reverted, since in this case delegation itself is
subject to credibility problems. So, if changing the level of independence of the central bank
is difficult, then governments can only influence economic decisions with other instruments.
One such instrument is fiscal policy.
European countries had very different types of debts coming out of World War II, and
our focus here will not be on specific mechanisms due to debt levels. However, fiscal spending
has usually played a relevant role in the story of economic reforms. Expenditure allowed
10
most governments in the run–up to the Euro to reach growth goals necessary for further
integration. The Maastricht convergence criteria, for example, allowed ‘moderate’ levels of
debt (up to 60 percent of GDP) in order to balance the future monetary policy constraints.12
This said, we expect the differences in fiscal policies to be inconclusive in explaining the level
of CBI among EMU countries in the aftermath of crises, because the monetary reforms in
the Eurozone after 1993 were bound to rigorous, anticipated criteria. In other words, we
know that since the creation of the European Central Bank (ECB) in 1999 neither the more
indebted nor the more ‘fiscally sober’ EMU candidates proposed (or enacted) changes to
CBI (Alesina and Drazen 1991).
Less clear is the impact of debt at the time of a crisis among monetarily independent
EU countries. Governments with fiscal leeway could use less fiscal pressure or, alternatively,
more spending to incentivize domestic investments and movement of capital. According
to the standard Mundell–Fleming model, increased government expenditure in a small open
economy can be combined with expanding monetary authority in order to increase the general
income of the economy without affecting interest rates. However, fiscal policy is only effective
in a fixed exchange rate regime. Given the higher heterogeneity of non–EMU countries and
the different degrees of spillover that crises in a European country can have on the other,
one could expect a slow implementation of fiscal policy to have an insignificant impact on
reforms towards economic actors. This contrasting expectations make us agnostic about the
effectiveness of fiscal policy conditional on a crisis in non–EMU countries.
Hypothesis 2: Financial crises have increased CBI in European countries unconditional
of changing debt levels.
12
Recent research has shown that fiscal ‘gimmickry’ in Europe has undermined the validity of the Maastricht convergence criteria (Alt et al 2014). We will not dive into this interesting stem of research in this
paper.
11
Effect of Crises on Political Reforms: Legislative Scrutiny
Institutional reforms in any political system can take the form of economic restructuring or,
otherwise, political changes. The literature often considers whether inequality is a necessary
trigger of institutional reforms. Here, we follow Haggard and Kaufmann (2012) in arguing
that there are mechanisms through which distributional power conflicts – which become most
often acute in times of financial stress – are translated into political changes.
In a cooperative context like the European Council, which is the highest forum of EU
decision making, distributive conflicts are really a tension between those that want to move
away from the status quo and those that want to remain on the current bargaining terms.
We assume that, as any exogenous shock, an economic crisis worsens the political status
quo, moving it away from the preferences of the key social groups and therefore the core of
the polity. Obviously, the interests of these actors might also diverge more and more. If the
polity decides by unanimity (as the European Union does) on institutional reforms, the potential for introducing new rules depends on whether the possibly expanding core ‘swallows
up’ a newly located status quo. Evidently, no reforms are possible with a status quo located
inside the set of (Pareto-optimal) solutions.13
Given the voting rules in the Union, crisis management and decision making may be
dictated by the members which are closest to the status quo. This is especially the case since
the 2007 Lisbon Treaty, which has brought a supranationalist twist to the intergovernmental
negotiations. As Article 9B of the Treaty makes clear, the President does not depend on the
laggard members of the organization: “The European Council shall elect its President, by a
qualified majority, for a term of two and a half years, renewable once”.14 This has increased
13
This regularity is in line with institutionalist analyses of the unanimity rule that examine the relationship
between preference heterogeneity and political change. According to Colomer (1999: 548), the potential for
policy reform depends considerably on the location of the status quo: “a large distance from the status quo to
the actors’ ideal points offer many possibilities for choice to the decision-makers and may make the decision
relatively open and uncertain.” Under majority rule and multi-dimensional policy spaces, the existence of
a core is not guaranteed (Greenberg 1979). However, there is a close negative relationship between the size
of the core and the size of the win-set (Drüner et al. 2013, Tsebelis 2002). Accordingly, although the core
expands, this change might be offset through the move of the status quo away from the ideal points of the
committee members.
14
See main text of the treaty at http://www.consilium.europa.eu/documents/treaty-of-lisbon.
12
the chance that a President pursues interests that are not in line with the most nationalist
member states, but rather opts for policy outcomes which the member states with supranationalist leanings may favour.
While this discussion might lead some to think that economic crises cannot move the
parameters of political change in the EU (Armingeon and Baccaro 2012), in our view crises
activate some types of demand for political change. Following the notion of Colomer (1999),
financial crises can trigger reforms as long as they move the policy ‘reference point’ to a
location that is sufficiently bad in comparison to reform options. Citizens hold governments
responsible for the economic turmoil, so they will demand changes that lower the risk of a
new crisis from them or their successors. So, at minimum, parliaments – as popular representations for the most part – should constrain their executives to provide further transparency
and more reports on the decision making process in Brussels.
The European integration literature that studies information provision to national legislatures is generally in support of this conjecture. Winzen (2013), for example, notes that
the increase in instruments for parliamentary control of EU institutions since the 1990s
shows that national parliaments have reacted to the challenges of European integration.15
Similarly, in a study of debates at plenary parliamentary sessions in northern Europe, de
Wilde (2014) identifies the increasing authority of the EU as a main driver of parliamentary
scrutiny mechanisms. What we think needs to be incorporated in these considerations is
the influence of economic crises, and in particular the potential mechanisms behind demand
for EU oversight institutions that financial events can activate. In the absence of economic
stress, legislatures can avail executive constraints and propose more political checks to EU
institutions. After all, voters are aware that legislatures are the signators of governmental instruments (e.g. currency pegs and budgets) that come with international treaties.
Consequently, voters are supportive of more institutional accountability as long as national
15
The author writes: “there is reason to believe that these reactions have, to some extent, been driven
by parliamentary ambitions to secure a role in a deepening Union. While adaptation does not bring back
authority transferred to the EU level, it enables domestic legislatures to play a role in decision-making via
their national governments” (Winzen 2013, p. 318).
13
institutions work responsibly (Armingeon and Ceka, 2014). By contrast, during a crisis legislatures have less social capital, and therefore less power to contest their government. Like
executives, members of parliaments face high electoral constraints at the outbreak of the
crisis, and will try to expose themselves the least to the public and the EU. Parliaments will
then demand less or no political changes to the way EU institutions are governed.
This said, supranational economic obligations can make an important difference on demand for political reforms at the time of a crisis. Conditional on a severe economic shock,
we contend that only parliaments in independent monetary systems have the leeway to withdraw or halt demands for political reforms. These systems are free to do so because they
have economies at the fringes of the Monetary Union, and their political actions have relatively little impact on any other specific EU country. Consequently, legislative demands
for oversight institutions in the EU should have decreased in non–Eurozone countries at the
outbreak of crises, conditional of a country being under the crisis.16
Now consider the parliaments in the Eurozone in recent years. Like non–EMU countries, these parliaments have the incentive to withdraw pressure on their executive leaders
and let them operate with lower levels of accountability at the outbreak of a crisis. Vice
versa, one may expect systems less affected by a crisis to feel the duty to expand control of
EU institutions. Especially when other countries are under a crisis, unaffected Euro countries
should demand more transparency on how the EU allocates resources in assistance plans and
bail outs. And yet, while we think these mechanisms may be in place, there are also rational
calculations that justify a democratic political inertia after a crisis. From a reputation–based
perspective, the international status of the Monetary Union may deter countries less involved
in a crisis, and therefore more incentivized to see institutional reforms, to demand changes
16
For instance, the UK required much policy involvement after the 2008 banking crush. Anticipating
the political costs of exposing itself to more decision making transparency, the parliament should have
deferred any political demands to the EU. By contrast, Eastern European countries outside of the Euro
that suffered less from the recent crisis, like Poland, were likely concerned with “the activity of statutory
auditors and entities authorized to audit financial statements and public supervision of EU activities” (see
Poland’s Komisja Nadzoru Audytowego [Audit Oversight Commission], 2013 Report. http://www.mf.gov.
pl/documents/764034/3811889/20130417_SPRAWOZDANIE_KNA_za_rok_2012_EN.pdf).
14
in the European status quo that would ‘shame’ laggard Euro countries (Checkel 2005). As
Mansfield and Pevehouse (2006: 144) note, reneging the recognized rules upon which the
European Community is based on can damage each member state’s international integrity.
Thus, we expect that the trade-off of parliaments’ demand for more EU accountability is the
risk of depressing the governments in crisis–countries upon which the common currency relies. Recent international relations research has found reputation concerns critical to explain
the behaviour of international organizations (Tomz 2003). Maintaining the credibility of the
same currency should then incentivize Euro countries to halt demands for more oversight
institutions in the course of a crisis.
Hypothesis 3: Financial crises have decreased the legislative demand for oversight institutions after the war, but had no effect in EMU countries after the Maastricht Treaty.
One may finally ask whether fiscal policies can influence the demand for political reforms at
the time of a crisis. Countries that can afford social spending at the time of a crisis can expand
fiscal policies to compensate public outrage. This strategy should release electoral pressure,
and allow parliaments to pursue tighter control of the executive. Therefore, generally, we
expect fiscal troubles and financial crises to shape political demands together. However,
we also expect fiscal policy to generate different externalities across EMU and non–EMU
countries in the post–Maastricht years. In the monetary union, a country’s fiscal policy is
subject to collective control, and can have spillover effects via trade, borrowing costs or –
in the most concerning scenario – risk of default. Consequently, to avoid capital outflows
and a weak Euro, countries in the EMU have pressure to help the indebted country. This,
we conjecture, resolves in less political demands from Eurozone states, even if they are less
indebted or less affected by the crisis.17 The effect should be different in non–EMU countries.
States with the flexibility to use fiscal instruments should be able to overcome the negative
effect of the crisis on demand for reforms. Therefore, we expect non–EMU countries with
17
Evidently the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP) was meant to avoid this type of forced burden sharing
with the Excessive Deficit Procedure and multiple fines. However, in 2005 the SGP was reformulated and
made significantly less rigid.
15
flexible fiscal policies to propose oversight institutions at the time of a crisis.
Hypothesis 4: Financial crises have increased the legislative demand of oversight institutions conditional of increasing debt levels, especially in non–EMU countries after the
Maastricht Treaty.
Crises and Reforms in Europe: Historical Accounts
We start our investigation of the institutional effects of financial crises with a qualitative
overview of the economic and political reforms that have led to the current state of the EU
since 1950. The most central element of our analysis is the occurrence of financial shocks,
so we first need to identify the type of crisis that we want to trace. While much research in
international finance is devoted to studying the ‘logic of currency crises’ (Eichengreen et al
1995), in this paper we focus on the economic stress generated by banking crises.18
To trace the occurrence of banking crises, we rely on the IMF data compiled by Laeven
and Valencia (2012), who define “financial distress in the banking system as indicated by
significant bank runs, losses in the banking system, and/or bank liquidations [followed by]
policy intervention measures in response to significant losses in the banking system” (p.
4). As one would expect, banking crises often occur at delicate fiscal moments. In Laeven
and Valencia’s global dataset, 82 country–year observations are characterized by the co–
occurrence of both banking and debt crises. Furthermore, some spillovers may be in place,
as 63 starting years for a debt and 123 beginnings of severe banking (there are additionally
206 commencements of currency crises). Europe is no exception: 13 of the 19 European
countries in the midst of financial crises between 1950 and 2010 had debt levels higher than
70 percent of their GDP.
However, note that the fact that banking crises have increased in the modern history of
18
We prefer crises in the banking sectors over currency depreciations, because European discussions on
the unitary peg have to some extent anticipated weak currency moments, and also because banking crises in
Europe have generally been heterogeneous and exogenous. Moreover, because commercial banks behave as
independent international agents, banking crises provide us a strictly exogenous type of crises.
16
Europe is in stark contrast with the democratic trends observed since the end of the world
wars. In the course of multiple waves of regime change and liberalization, the continent saw
the end of dictatorships in Spain, Portugal and Greece in the 1970s, and the ‘speedy’ transition in the Eastern block and Baltic countries between 1985 and 1999. Economic transitions
clearly co-vary with democratic transformations across the continent.19 Of course, the focus
here is not on Europe’s democratic waves nor the link between democratic movements and
economic risk in specific European countries. Nonetheless, the cross-country data supports
our basic assumption that crises are not isolated events, and in fact are closely connected
with political change. To establish whether this can be said for EU institutions as well, we
need to investigate the relationship between political reforms and economic policies at the
basis of the European project.
The founding treaty that established the European Economic Community dates back
to 1957, but, as Moravscik (2012) notes, Europe began building an agenda for political and
monetary issues only in the 1970s. One may say that a major reason why the meetings of the
European Union leaders were progressively incremented is the many debt and exchange-rate
crises that affected prices, spending, and wages across the continent starting in the 1970s.
With the 1973 oil shock, the Union was confronted with the challenges of rethinking its role
in the global financial system after the end of the Bretton Woods regime. Under pressing
circumstances, the European Commission headed by President Malfatti adopted a financial
framework that started discussions on a single market. In parallel, a treaty was signed that
authorized direct elections to the European Assembly. The European Council started its
tri–annual meetings in the same circumstances, in 1975.
Similar steps were taken following other times of financial distress. For example, the
1979 US savings and loans crisis contributed to the ‘Eurosclerosis’ described by Giersch
(1985). This crisis was partly reflected in the British budgetary antagonism in November
1979. At this point the path of EU integration followed two parallel lines, one of further
19
More specifically, we identify six out of 13 European crises to occur in a five–year interval from a
democratic regime change (see Figure A.1).
17
economic conjunction and one of political consolidation, through further enlargement and
new European Parliament elections. Comparably, the eve of the Black Monday in the second
half of 1987 saw the European Commission of President Delors signing the Single European
Act. Two years later, in December 1989, Delors launched a new round of intergovernmental
conferences on monetary union and set up a European Bank of Reconstruction and development (EBRD) to provide assistance to Eastern European countries (Gilbert 2004). More
recent crises corresponded to similar double reactions in the Union. For example, the early
1990s recession was thoroughly addressed in the economic discussions in Maastricht. At
the same negotiations, the Community agreed upon the co-decision procedure according to
which the European Parliament and the Council jointly adopted legislation. Finally, the
2008 crisis fostered parallel discussions on EMU decision making reforms, while splitting duties between Commission and European Council presidents. On the one hand, the power of
the ECB and the European Stability Facility was strengthened. On the other hand, political
powers continued being cointegrated (see Table 1).
What is particularly interesting about this process is that, despite the parallel changes
of economic and political integration at the time of crises, not all member states showed the
same enthusiasm for economic and political proposals. One year after the beginning of the
recent Eurocrisis, Poland indicated they wished to re-open some areas of the Lisbon Treaty
to negotiations, due to concerns with misrepresentation of Polish people’s interests in the
negotiation outcome. Similarly, the Dutch prime minister Jan-Peter Balkenende demanded
a greater role for national parliaments in the EU decision-making process (Finke et al 2012:
171). To explore the positions over the contested reforms in the EU, we investigated member
states’ historical preferences for economic and political reform in the EU parliament. We
looked at the ranges of EU reform focusing on the content of party platforms for past European Parliament elections, which we measure through Veen’s (2001) Euromanifestos data.
The distinguished dimensions refer to the power of the Monetary Union and the shift of
18
competencies to ‘Brussels.’20
Our calculation of the ranges of EU agreement follows a parametric multidimensional
scaling (MDS) analysis of national positions. Figure 1 illustrates the factorized positions
at six elections since 1979.21 The plots can be interpreted as the relationship between the
differences in states’ ideal policies on the identified dimensions. It is noticeable that across
time there has been a remarkable distance between ‘unsatisfied’ countries (in the bottom
left quadrants of the plots) and ‘satisfied’ countries (in the upper right quadrants). This
indicates not only the presence of persistent disagreements across member states, but also
the fact that some countries consistently resisted reforms more than others. The configurations also indicate that at each European Parliament elections at least one of the financially
troubled countries in the Union (e.g. Italy in the 1970s, Portugal in the late 1990s, plus
Greece in five of the six time points) was close to the status quo policy space. Looking at
the most recent data points for 2008, the MDS evinces that the potential for reform at the
spark of the sovereign debt crisis was restricted to non-EMU countries, which cluster in the
bottom left quadrant of the plot (with the exception for Finland). At the same time, there
were few countries whose assessment of both dimensions is positive (upper right quadrant),
but that do not only include countries that suffered the crisis.
Combined with our historical discussion of the EU, the MDS exercise has three important implications. First, changes on the identified dimensions clearly emerge in the history
of EU reforms. Although political issues and economic events are not easy to disentangle,
they seem to be linked by the trade–off between the strengthening of the central economic
20
We rely on Veen’s additive EU policy scales. The EMU dimension is based on two categories: Positive
or negative mentions of the ECB (Manifesto Project categories 4087; 4086) as well as the assessments of
EMU and the Euro (3151; 3141). The delegation dimension instead comprises government attitudes to
three topics: European Community/Union (110; 108); Transfer of Power to the EC/EC (3011; 3021); and
Competencies of the European Parliament (307; 306). Positions are constructed by summing frequencies
of quasi–sentences from European Parliament manifestos. They are scaled on each policy spectrum and
computed with a logarithmic function. This function accounts for extreme positions on either side of the
pre–determined policy spectrum. The range of policy scores goes from –50 to 50, where 0 denotes ambiguity
about an issue.
21
The reliability of the MDS configurations is generally good and does not vary substantively if we calculate
nonparametric multidimensional scales (mean stress values = 5.43e-13). The preference arrangements remain
similar if we use the Chapel Hill Expert Survey 2010 dataset.
19
institutions and the increase the power of either the European Parliament or the national
legislatures. Second, the clustering of non–EMU states in the reformist ‘zone’ of the policy
debate (Figure 1) lends support to the conjecture that a main driver of political differences
is the distinction between EMU and non–EMU countries. Finally, the fact that the score of
countries with less troubled economies (France, the Netherlands, but also Austria) is close
to countries like Greece and Spain suggests support to our conjecture that, even if countries
less affected by the recent crisis should have complained about the state of the Union, there
must be reasons that justify why they accepted the status quo.22 In the next section we
provide a quantitative test of our conjecture with a panel data analysis.
Determinants of Reforms: The Empirical Investigation
The Data
The goal of this paper is to provide evidence that economic crises in the EU have increased
the autonomy of technocratic actors and decreased political delegation in countries with
monetary independence, but not necessarily in the core European countries. In order to empirically test our theoretical expectations, we need indicators of central bank independence
and demand for delegation. Here we concentrate on all members of the EU as of 2010, with
22
Of course, one may argue that the status quo is simply determined by deliberations in the EU intergovernmental setting, which is still based on unanimity voting. This lends the most conservative, anti–reform
government veto power in case all other member states wish to change the prevailing status quo. If the anti–
reform country only wants a minimal change, a modest reform or a more fare reaching policy change without
the consent of the recalcitrant are possible outcomes (Schneider and Cederman 1994). As Colomer’s (1999)
general analysis of the unanimity rule shows, however, the implications of this decision making procedure
reach beyond the expectation that the members which are closest to the status quo are able to dictate decision making. This is especially the case for the European Union since the Lisbon Treaty, which has brought
a supranationalist twist to the intergovernmental negotiations. Our expectation that the introduction of a
Council Presidency has introduced a decision making bias in favour of the group of countries therefore rests
on the assumption that the Presidency and the countries supporting it have an informational advantage over
the less integration inclined members of the organization. If such an asymmetry really exists, supranational
agenda setting, delimited by the unanimity rule, is feasible. However, the reform potential under unanimity
depends on this fallback position of the committee members. This indeterminacy offers a potential for biased
decision making if the reform potential is limited and thus if status quo is relatively close to the so–called
‘unanimity winset.’
20
the exclusion of Luxembourg and Malta for which we have no sufficient data.23
Our first dependent variable is Change in central bank independence. In order to measure CBI between 1950 and 2010, we rely on several sources that together produce one
high-quality indicator. For the years between 1950 and 1973, we leverage Sadeh’s (2010)
version of the classic Cukierman et al. (1992) measure (see also Cukierman, Miller and
Neyapti 2002), which covers 72 countries for four time periods (here we use the 1950-59 and
1960-72). For the years between 1973 and 2010, we use data from Bodea and Hicks (2014).
The authors updated the Cukierman et al (2002) data, and merged them with Crowe and
Meade (2008) indicators for 69 countries at a two points in time (the 1980s and 2003),
Jácome and Vázquez (2005) information on Latin America, and Bodea (2014)’s coverage of
the central banks of Eastern and Central European countries.24
The CBI scores of Sadeh (2010) and Bodea and Hicks (2014) are both based on a
weighted calculation of a list of indicators. These indicators fall into four categories that
include Chief Executive Officer, Policy Formation, Objectives, and Limitations on Lending
to the Government. The indices are calculated on a scale from 0 to 1, which we multiplied
by a factor of 100 so that the score goes from perfect dependence (0) to perfect independence
(100). As we want to study the change in independence from one year to the other, we first
calculated this indicator’s lag, and then the rate of CBI change. We then magnified the
measure so to have a theoretical range going from -100, for complete loss of central bank independence, to +100, for complete gain of central bank independence.25 Note that between
23
The member states under consideration are the following: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus,Czech
Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany (West Germany until 1989), Greece, Hungary,
Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden
and the United Kingdom.
24
Of course, because in this paper we are interested in studying EU reforms and not the heterogeneity
of CBI across the world, our focus is on the subset of CBI for European countries. However, in separate
investigations we ran our models on the global data as well. We find that the CBI mechanism is connected
to banking crises, but that fiscal policies operate in different ways compared to our European sample.
25
Note that Sadeh (2010), together with Guthmann (2011), provides CBI data also for more contemporary
years. Although for the years 1973-2010 we rely on Bodea and Hicks (2014) because their data is more up-todate and comprehensive, it is worth mentioning that Sadeh (2010) and Bodea and Hicks (2014) do not always
agree on the levels of CBI. For example, Sadeh’s data suggests that the highest levels of CBI were scored
by Estonia in the 1990s (CBI=77.82), while Bodea and Hicks (2014) calculate highest CBI for Armenia
and Indonesia in the 2000s and Spain in the mid–1990s. Nonetheless, effectively the CBI indicators by
Sadeh and Bodea and Hicks correlate at the Person’s correlation coefficient of .8. This value indicates high
21
1993 and 1999 all countries running up to the Euro reach levels of CBI up to 92 percent,
and that from 1999 onwards all EMU countries are assigned a CBI score of 86 percent.26
Our second dependent variable is a measure for more or less political delegation. Because we are interested in capturing how legislatures pressure governments to be accountable
at the EU level, we need a proxy of formal requests and explicit mandates from the national
parliaments to the EU. The best measure we found for our purposes is the index proposed
by Winzen (2012, 2013). The author collected codified rules contained in formal documents
including constitutions, legislation, parliamentary rules of procedure, ministerial rules of procedure or other types of official documents across European countries since 1953. The large
amount of information is related to legislative access and processing of information, and altogether provides indicators of ‘oversight institutions’ that parliaments have adopted to fight
the organization and the political constraints that it creates. While Winzen reports actual
numbers of, for example, memoranda and reports to the European Affairs Committees, her
aggregates the indicators into a standardized index. The index scores go from 0 until 1.75
for the EU countries under consideration, and show sensible differences across states and
times. We take the yearly rate of this index to create the variable Change in Oversight
Institutions.27
The main factor that we investigate in this paper is the occurrence of a financial crisis.
The literature tend to distinguish two types of crises: banking crises and currency crises. We
focus here on banking crises in European countries for the same reasons that we highlighted
in the previous section. Using the indicators from the Laeven and Valencia (2008, 2012)
consistency, and should not be undervalued given that several measures of central bank law tend to disagree.
For example, the indicator developed by Grilli, Masciandaro, and Tabellini and colleagues and the so–called
Eijffinger–Schaling index are hardly uniform nor comparable.
26
Countries that were integrated in the EMU since 1993 and adopted a currency peg to the Euro in 19992000 were Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal and Spain.
Greece joined in 2001, Slovenia in 2007, Cyprus (and Malta) in 2008, and Slovakia in 2009. Denmark
adopted the European Exchange Rate Mechanism but not the currency, while Bulgaria, Czech Republic,
Hungary, Poland, Romania, Sweden and the United Kingdom are not integrated in the EMU.
27
Winzen (2012) describes the weighting of the different ‘dimensions’ that he identifies across all the
procedures and rules. In substantive terms, the index has a theoretical minimum of zero and a theoretical
maximum of 3. See Winzen (2012, pp. 661-662) for a detailed discussion of the aggregation.
22
IMF dataset, we construct a binary variable Banking Crisis that takes the value of one if a
country experienced financial distress in the banking system, and zero otherwise. We lag this
variable by one year, to warrant endogeneity concerns. Note that we also construct a binary
variable for currency crises, which we exploit later to check the robustness of our findings
with the banking crises.28 Given our conditionality argument with respect to debt, we also
use a measure of public debt to GDP. We collected this indicator from Abbas et al (2011)
and updated the missing values for the recent years with the OECD debt to GDP ratio
values (OECD 2014). The debt measure ranges from 1 to 216.9, with highest values in the
1950s in the United Kingdom but also the 1990s in Bulgaria. To facilitate the interpretation
of this measure, we split the variable and report the coefficient for Debt: High, which takes
the value of 1 if a country’s debt is beyond the sample median, and zero otherwise.
The distribution of these variables is telling in itself. CBI changes have occurred quite
regularly in European countries, and so have changes in legislative demands for oversight
institutions. However, these events happened following different paths and at different times.
European countries have overall increased CBI after crises, such as in the case of Spain after
1975 and Sweden after 1993. However, no EMU country – as expected – changed the CBI
in the past fifteen years, while countries like Bulgaria or Slovakia made use of this policy
during the 2000s (Figure A.2). Moreover, it is noticeable that high debt levels and crises do
not occur when CBI changes. As we conjecture, governments may be using CBI to reinsure
investors, but not to compensate peaks in fiscal deficits.
The distribution of change in demands for oversight institutions, however, presents different patterns (Figure A.3). New EU member countries like Greece and Cyprus saw an
increase of oversight institutions in the late 1990s. Arguably, parliaments in these countries
increased political control of executives at this time, because so many economic sacrifices
were being demanded from them by the Union in the run-up to the Euro. However, no more
28
Laeven and Valencia (2012: 11) define a currency crisis as a “nominal depreciation of the currency visà-vis the U.S. dollar of at least 30 percent that is also at least 10 percentage points higher than the rate of
depreciation in the year before” (ibid.: 11).
23
institutions are observable neither in these countries nor in ‘safer’ countries (e.g. Germany)
during the 2008-10 crisis years. By contrast, non-EMU countries proposed more EU oversight institutions in the later 2000s, when other countries were confronting bankruptcy and
default. Bulgaria and Poland, for example, increased the number of oversight institutions
between 2005 and 2010 by more than 40 percent.
Estimation Strategy
We test our hypotheses on the nexus between financial crises, central bank independence and
legislative demand for institutional accountability with a difference–in–differences research
design. Our models measure the causal effect of crises on changes in CBI and the degree of
oversight institutions by comparing pre- to post-crisis changes in our outcomes of interest.
The treated group is the set of countries exposed to crises. The comparison group is the rest
of the countries.
This research design is easily adaptable to our yearly-country panel data. However, in
recognition of the fact that countries may not always follow parallel trends before the occurrence of crises in the years between 1950 and 2010, we control for a few possible confounders.
Inflation rate is the historical yearly rate of the consumer price index retrieved from all EU
Statistical Offices and compiled by Inflation Europe.29 Ideology is the party orientation of
the executive from 1960 onwards. It is a variable that takes values from 1 (left–wing) to
5 (right–wing), and comes from the CPDS dataset (Armingeon et al., 2011). Finally, in
separate regressions, we used logged GDP per capita (World Bank Indicators 2014) and a
measure of trade openness as the sum of trade divided by GDP (IMF 2014). Note that the
results remain largely unchanged if we integrate also these two additional control variables.
Our main model specification in the difference–in–differences framework is
Tit = α + βCit + γXit + ηi + θt + it
(1)
29
See http://www.inflation.eu/inflation-rates/historic-cpi-inflation.aspx.
these values against the Eurostat values for the 2000s.
24
We confirmed
where i indexes each country in the dataset and t indexes the yearly periods. The measure
Y refers to the outcomes under analysis, which are differenced and indicate changes.30 The
parameter C is the occurrence of banking crises, which we lag by one year. The matrix
of controls X has a coefficient vector γ, while ηi are country fixed effects and θt are year
fixed effects parameters. For the CBI regressions we expect β > 0, while for the political
institutions regressions, we expect β < 0.
We run the regressions at the aggregate level for the whole time period, and by EMU
and non–EMU subsamples after 1993, the year of the Maastricht Treaty. According to our
first hypothesis, banking crises have an average significant effect across all countries that
are subject to them. However, we also argued that in more recent years these effects should
only be observed in non–EMU countries, which have a stronger flexibility to change their
monetary policies. Similarly, we conjectured that under a crisis independent countries have
generally an incentive to eclipse from the EU spotlight and halt the demand for oversight
institutions. But for the subsample analyses, we predict a null finding for EMU countries,
which have a lower incentive to disrupt the reputation and credibility of their EMU partners.
Finally, we modify the specification from equation 1 in models that account for the interaction between banking crises and debt. Interactions in difference–in–differences frameworks
admittedly complicate the inferences of the multiplicative term. However, they allow us to
estimate effects that are not just based on trends of crises but also on the alternative trends
across both crisis and non–crisis states determined by changes in fiscal spending. Given our
conditionality hypotheses, these interactions should generate no significant differences with
respect to the CBI change, but they should have an effect on the less indebted and more
monetarily independent European countries with respect to institutional oversight.
30
Differencing also helps circumnavigating possible concerns with autoregressive errors. The Wooldridge
tests indicate that the differenced variables show no autoregressivity.
25
Results
We report our findings on the variable Change in central bank independence in Table 2.
The first set of results refer to the sample of all independent countries. This includes all
country–years where a European country had complete control of its economy, hence the
entire series of countries that were never part of the EMU as well as all the years before
an EMU country was integrated in the Monetary Union. We show the coefficients for three
alternative difference–in–differences set ups: a model with only the crisis treatment; a model
where we interact the Banking Crisis dummy with the Debt: High dummy; and a model
where we additionally include the Inflation and Ideology variables.
The first model indicates that banking crises have positive effects on central banks’
autonomy. More specifically, a shock to public and private banks is conducive to a national
government providing about 6 percent more independence to central banks, although this
effect only borders statistical significance at the 10% p–value. The second model introduces
the effect of debt and the interaction with the banking crisis. The effect of crises is weakened, and the interaction has overall a null impact on the changes to CBI. This evidence
is consistent to hypothesis that, overall, debt has not mediated the effect of crises in European countries. If anything, the stages of economic integration in Europe came before the
increases in debt, through which government financed their efforts to match the standards
superimposed by Brussels. In the third model we account for pre–determined effects of inflation and executive ideology on CBI change. However, the results remain overall consistent
with out findings.
Our second difference–in–differences analyses on CBI change focus on the subset of
country–year observations for independent (non–EMU) states after the enactment of the
Maastricht Treaty. The results that leverage the single effect of lagged banking crises show
that, among non–EMU countries, crises have a larger and statistically significant effect on
CBI change. All else equal, a shock like the Swedish crisis in the mid–1990s has increased
CBI by 13.5 percent. This effect is however less clear when we explore the interaction with
26
debt crises. The results are unaltered if we include the additional confounding variables:
keeping all other variables are the mean, we detect a significant positive effect of facing a
banking crisis with a government’s decision to increase CBI by roughly 15 percent. Our statistical findings overall confirm the argument in the literature that European countries have
responded to crises with monetary instruments, and that this mechanism has helped also
independent countries in most recent years. The United Kingdom, for example, delegated a
small yet important amount of additional power to its central bank in 2009. We also find
that conditional of integrating in strict monetary treaties such as the EMU, crises have no
significant effects on CBI, which is directed at the supranational level.
We argued that, although on the economic side the EU can constrain the power of its
core member states, politically it can create incentives to support each other at the time of
a crisis, especially among countries that rely on the political credibility of the Union as a
whole. In order to test the second part of our argument, we ran regressions of Change in
Oversight Institutions with the same difference–in–difference approach. Table 3 presents our
results, which are focused on the same samples studied so far. The model that investigates
the single effect of Banking Crisis shows that a shock to the banking system depresses the
legislative control on EU executive affairs by approximately 3 percent (5 points in a scale
from 1 to 175). This effect is magnified in systems where debt is particularly high: in the
interaction model, a lagged banking crisis decreases the index of oversight institutions by
10 points. Moreover, we find that fiscal debt mediates the effect of crises as we expected.
Specifically, a crisis that impinges on countries that can expand their fiscal policies increases
the oversight institutions on the EU.31 This evidence corroborates our argument that political decisions are bound to the level of spending that governments can afford to compensate
the consequences of crises. Legislatures allow increases in expenditure at the cost of further
controlling governments’ behaviour. By contrast, governments that decrease spending are
less bound to legislative controls.
31
See Figure A.4 for the marginal effect plots of the influence of crises on the two outcome variables, and
Figure A.5 for the effect plots of crises conditional on the continuous measure of debt.
27
We finally explore the effect of crises for the subset of non–EMU countries after the
Maastricht Treaty. We find that a crisis declines the likelihood of changes in oversight institutions significantly, also under the conditions of increasing debt levels. These results
are overall consistent with our theoretical prediction that legislatures in states outside the
Eurozone are more willing to forgo control over the executive at critical economic times.
By contrast, our tests on the EMU–only sample (in the Appendix) indicate that this effect is neither substantial nor significant. Evidently the largest differences across oversight
institutions or the EU are detected by occurrence of a financial crisis. However, in more
recent years, the main difference is to be found in the cleavage between EMU and non–EMU
countries.
Robustness
Our results are robust to a number of sensitivity tests. In Table A.1 and Table A.2 we show
that our CBI estimations of the effect of crises between 1950 and 2010 do not generally suffer
from omitted variable bias, since including usual control indicators like GDP and trade openness in the regression equation does not change the significant effect of the lagged baking
crisis on both CBI and Oversight Institutions. The only relevant alteration is the loss of
significance of the interaction term between crises and debt in the analysis of parliamentary
oversight institutions. However, this is likely an artifact of the multi linearity between trade
openness, GDP and debt.
In alternative models reported in Table A.3 and Table A.4 we test the sensitivity of
our results to the sample definition. Overall our findings are consistent if we consider all
country–years without dropping the EMU country–years (columns 1–3). Even if balance the
sample and study only the period between 1993 and 2010, we still find the positive (but not
significant) effect of crises on CBI, while the effect on change of oversight institutions is significant and negative (columns 4–6). Finally, the results for EMU countries (columns 7–9)
are consistent with our expectation that these countries should not have changed neither
28
their CBI nor their demand for more supranational controls after the Maastricht Treaty.
One concern with our estimations is that our models may not purge spillover effects,
despite the country and year dummies that are required by the difference–in–differences approach. One way to address this econometric concern is to run population average models,
which are typically used when one wants to study average treatments on the overall population of states (Zorn 2001). The method typically used to estimate population average
models is the generalized estimating equations approach, which is flexible to different variance structures. In Table A.5 and Table A.6 we report the results of these models of the
change of CBI and oversight institutions, respectively. The estimates, which we calculate for
independent correlations and Huber-White standard errors, support our main findings. The
population–averaged regressions even strengthen the statistical significance of our negative
effects of crises on CBI, both in the singular (banking crisis) and the interaction (crisis and
debt) models.
We also tested whether our inferences on the demand for oversight institutions in the
EU are driven by the specific distribution of the index that Winzen (2013) proposes. In
Table A.7 we report results for a slightly alternative index based on the same qualitative
indicators (Winzen 2012). The results remain substantially unchanged, as the magnitude
of the effects is marginally larger. Given the fact that Winzen’s index is bound between
0 and 1.75, we also ran fixed effects tobit models. We find that both general sample of
European independent countries since 1950 and the specific sample of non–EMU countries
stop strengthening legislative powers vis–à–vis the EU after a crisis. By contrast, we find
that the 2008 crisis in EMU countries has not induced any significant decline in legislative
delegation (Table A.8).
We pushed out causal inferences further by investigating whether our results are driven
merely by considerations of sovereignty that parliaments raised at each time the EU enlarged. In other words, we need to check that truly exogenous banking crises are the drivers
of economic and political reforms, and not crises linked to market concerns with the reper-
29
cussions of EU conditionality at the time of further integration. We then purge the crises
indicators with an instrumental variable that takes values of 1 to 3, with 1 indicating the
most primitive level of accession to the EU, while 3 corresponds to full accession (Winzen
2012). Table A.9 reports the second stage least squares results for both the CBI and the
legislative oversight institutions regressions. We find that the effect of crises on CBI change
is indeed mitigated by whether countries are fully accessed to the EU. However, our inference
that banking crises drives the level of legislative control of EU policy making remains robust.
As a further set of analyses, we ran our models substituting banking crises with currency
crises. Our conjecture suggests that systems with monetary independence should have incentives to increase monetary policy and decrease parliamentary overview of EU institutions
when money is scarce and investments are low. However, in the instance of a currency attack
from abroad, one may expect all countries – so both the ones with monetary independence
and the ones in the EMU – to react decisively to the shock with a change of CBI. Moreover,
a currency crisis in the EMU may constitute a placebo test to the effect of banking crises
on political reforms, because currency crises should activate reactions precisely to defend
the political credibility of governments more connected in the Union, and less the non–EMU
countries. Table A.10 and Table A.11 corroborate these expectations, therefore providing
evidence that the mechanisms behind monetary autonomy and political reputation in the
Union are in place in the occurrence of crises.
Interpretation and Discussion
The evidence provided by our empirical estimations indicates that financial crises are conducive to reforms in the European Union, but not always and not at all conditions. Moreover,
it lends support to our theory it is not the democratic deficit but rather a threat of economic
reputation and international credibility that may stall these reforms. From a within–country
point of view, our findings are easy to understand with regards to CBI reforms. For example,
Estonia’s commitment to more CBI in the early 1990s was triggered by credit shrinkage of
30
the banking sector, which came hand in hand with public administration reform and the
reinforcement of the judiciary in 1998.32 Similarly, the Italian economic crisis in the early
1990s prompted a vigorous reaction. Banca d’Italia33 reports that
In the summer of 1994 a monetary tightening inaugurated a period of rigour. In
1995, a year that saw another foreign exchange crisis, the discount rate reached 9
per cent. The resolute action of the Bank of Italy in these years helped to reduce
inflation expectations. Price rises having been curbed, in 1996 monetary conditions were eased. Renewed confidence, both domestically and internationally,
permitted a reduction in long-term interest rates and led to a drastic cut in interest payments on the public debt; so monetary policy contributed significantly
to public financial adjustment. On the strength of these efforts, Italy was in the
first wave of countries to adopt the single European currency.
Evidently crises–driven CBI is linked to monetary reforms in the EU. What about the mechanism behind crises and political delegation? Our results corroborate our expectation that,
conditional on a crisis, the political reputation of governments upon which economic integration depends refrains parliaments from other (less affected) countries. This of course
does not mean that legislatures in Euro countries that were not affected by the recent 2008
crisis did not raise their voice for more institutional controls over the EU executive affairs.
Figure 2 clearly shows these patterns. On the run–up to the Eurocrisis, Euro countries like
France and Greece had parallel levels of demands for oversight institutions.34 However, as
the crisis of 2008 begins (red bar), one can see the spike of legislative concerns in France
vis–‘a–vis the more conservative parliament in Greece. We observe a similar trend in other
countries like the Netherlands and Belgium. The former was certainly a country where legislative forces complained for misuse of power and miscommunications between the national
and the EU level. After two large inquiries, the Dutch parliament established that it should
receive two issue reports every year by National Court of Audit about measures concerning
the financial crisis.35 At the same time, however, one may say that the reaction was less
32
See EU Enlargement Report on Estonia at http://ec.europa.eu/enlargement/archives/pdf/key_
documents/1998/estonia_en.pdf.
33
History of Banca d’Italia at https://www.bancaditalia.it/bancaditalia/storia/europa;
internal&action=_setlanguage.action?LANGUAGE=en
34
This is also what in the difference–in–differences framework is called the parallel trends assumption.
35
OECD Public Expenditure Committee. 2012. http://www.oecd.org/gov/budgeting/49793706.pdf.
31
striking as it could have been if the Netherlands had been less integrated in the Eurozone.
After all, reforms such as the 2010 Crisis and Recovery Act included, among others, committee contact with the EU and parliamentary questions. However, all these reforms depend
on negotiations at the EU level as well. In other words, the Netherlands government was
refrained to implement these provisions without the European Parliament approval.36
As evinced in the quantitative analyses, the starker differences in parliamentary behaviour emerge if we compare EMU and non–EMU countries, for example Bulgaria versus
Cyprus (Figure 2). The increase in oversight institutions in Eastern European states can be
– and has been – linked to the timing at which non–EMU countries adopted EU policies.
Evidently, giving up more sovereignty is counterbalanced with more oversight efforts. Our
mechanism however indicates that the occurrence (or non–occurrence) of crises reinforces
this. This is consistent with what we observe in the data: More independent states – like
Bulgaria – demanded more legislative controls and accountability once the crisis broke out
in its neighbour European countries. For example, the Bulgarian Committee on European
Affairs and Oversight of the European Funds prepared an Annual Work Program, which
included parliamentary observation and control of European “financial instruments, humanitarian aid and crisis response.”37 By contrast, countries that signed up to the Euro – like
Cyprus – proposes no further parliamentary controls. This decision importantly affected
not only the fate not only of its domestic politics but also signalled constraints to other
governments. In fear of protecting the credibility of the EU, Euro countries have accepted
the positions of these more sensitive countries.
36
U.S. Congressional Research Service. 2010. The European Union’s Response to the 2007–2009 Financial
Crisis. http://fas.org/sgp/crs/row/R41367.pdf.
37
See Annual Report on the Absorption of European Funds in the Republic of Bulgaria. 2012.
page 26.
http://parliament.bg/pub/cW/201202090951472011_Annual\%20Report_EU_Funds\%20-\
%20Resume_EN.pdf.
32
Conclusion
The original debate on the feasibility of reforms in the EU started out with Scharpf (1988),
who speculated that the European Union finds itself in a ‘joint decision making trap.’ In his
view, there are always governments that profit from the current status quo which renders
it impossible to change the rules of the game. The prediction is, however, misleading if
one considers that powerful countries have barely moved from the status quo themselves,
even when it was not their most beneficial position. Moreover, it does not provide a general
understanding of what combines and distinguishes members in supranational organizations
at the outbreak of events like the 2008 sovereign debt crisis. Evidently, we still do not know
whether economic crises can either break or solidity reform paths in international organizations like the EU.
Contributing to this debate, Kurpas (2007: 3) believes that: “those who see the European Union as another tool in the box of the nation state have clearly won the case, which
is unlikely to be without consequence for the prospect of future integration.” Dougan (2008:
698) moreover maintains that “a relative resurgence in intergovernmental influence within
the functioning of the Union” is possible. As we have shown, these observations are only
partially correct as incentives for monetary credibility and currency reputation against the
wishes of some member states has introduced the possibility of supranational agenda setting.
The possibility to move the outcomes closer to the ideal points of EU agents like the ECB
adds to the frustration of those who generally believe that the organization suffers from a
democratic deficit and that increased legitimization of its policy outcomes is mandatory in
times of crisis and crisis decision making.
Using a different range of empirical data and methods, we have shown how financial
crises influenced economic and delegation policies in post–war Europe. We showed that severe economic distortions may not only result in beneficial policy changes, as Drazen and
Grilli (1993) demonstrate, but that economic shocks can also provoke institutional distortions, especially in the most integrated and reciprocally dependent countries of the EU.
While key decisions in this international organization will continue following unanimity for
33
the most part, reform proposals will generally benefit some member states more than others. In our view, the Union can only rectify this imbalance through the decision to delegate
the drafting of intergovernmental conferences to institutions and actors that have not profited from recent institutional reforms to a disproportional extent. We showed that national
parliaments from some member states at the periphery of the Union have increasingly developed ideas on how the drift of executive power to Brussels can be curtailed and how a
European fiscal policy can be democratically legitimized at the time of a crisis. However,
such a scenario assumes that the EU-skeptical shift in the public preferences witnessed since
more than a decade does not dramatically accelerate. A growing heterogeneity of preferences
would indeed render adequate institutional reforms in the European Union unfeasible.
34
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Figures
40
Dimension 2 (EMU)
10
5
0
−5
Ire
−20
Ire
−10
Ita
Bel Neth
Ger
Ger
−10
10
UK
20
Dimension 1 (Delegation)
0
Neth
Den
Fra
30
−5
0
Den
UK
Por
Lux
5
Swe
10
Dimension 1 (Delegation)
Sp
15
Gre
Multidimensional Scaling (1994)
Lux
Bel
Multidimensional Scaling (1979)
Fra
Ita
Sp
−30
Ire
Ita
−20
Ire
−20
Ger
0
10
20
Dimension 1 (Delegation)
Fra
UK
Den
30
Lux
0
Ita Aus
Bel
10
Gre
Dimension 1 (Delegation)
−10
Neth
Ger
UK
Fin
Fra
Swe
Por
20
Multidimensional Scaling (1998)
−10
Bel
Lux
Neth
Multidimensional Scaling (1984)
Den
40
Gre
●
Cze
Sp
Bel
Ire
−20−
●
●
Est
Fi
−10
Ita
0
Fra
UK
Den
10
Neth
20
●
●
10
Lit
Swe
●
●
●
●
✒
●
●
✍
0
●
Slo
Aus
Bel
●
Ita
●
●❒
10
Gre
Neth
Cyp
●
●
●
Mal
20
Svk
Hu
●
Fra
Dimension 1 (Delegation)
Pol
Lat
●
●
UK
Ger
Lux
Den
●
Ire Por
30
Multidimensional Scaling (2008)
Dimension 1 (Delegation)
Ger
Por
Lux
Multidimensional Scaling (1989)
Figure 1: EU member states’ preferences for monetary integration and political delegation
30
20
10
6
4
2
●
Sp
Gre
Multidimensional scaling configuration of member states’ aggregate ideal positions on two issues coded in the Euromanifesto project
(Veen 2011). For 2008
22
manifestos, Bulgaria and Romania are omitted because they are missing. In red the countries that since 1993 (or upon EU admission) belong to the EMU.
Dimension 2 (EMU)
−10
10
5
0
−5
−10
Dimension 2 (EMU)
Dimension 2 (EMU)
0
−10
−20
15
10
5
0
−5
−10
Dimension 2 (EMU)
Dimension 2 (EMU)
0
−2
−4
−6
20
10
0
−10
−20
41
Figure 2: Pre- and post-Eurocrisis trends on legislative oversight
1990
2000
Years
2010
1.5
0
.5
EU Oversight Index
1
1.5
1
EU Oversight Index
.5
0
0
.5
EU Oversight Index
1
1.5
Pre- and post-Eurocrisis trends on parliamentary oversight
1990
2000
Years
2010
1990
2000
Years
France
Netherlands
Bulgaria
Greece
Belgium
Cyprus
Lines correspond to the country–specific values of the institutional oversight index of Winzen (2012). The
red bar corresponds to the beginning of the Eurocrisis (2008).
42
2010
Tables
Table 1: EU economic crises and institutional reforms
Crises in the EU
Symptoms
Political reforms
Monetary reforms
1971-76: End of Bretton
Malfatti
Paris Summit and
Currency ‘snake’
Woods and first oil shock
Commission
EA elections (1974)
(1972)
1979-84: Second oil
‘Eurosclerosis’
Court of Justice and EP
EMS/ECU (1979)
shock
empowerment (1980)
and SEA (1984)
1987-91: US loan crisis
British
New Intergovernmental Confe–
Delors EMU
and ‘Black Monday’
vetoes
rences launched (1990)
Report (1989)
1992-97: Oil price spike and
Santer
Codecision introduced (1992)
Maastricht Treaty
UK ‘Black Wednesday’
Commission
and extended (1997)
(1992) and ECB (1998)
2007–12: US subprime
European
Empowered national
EMU decision
mortgage and
Stability
parliaments (Lisbon Treaty,
making reforms
Eurozone crisis
Mechanism
2009)
(2012–)
Events in column 1 feature in our updated version of the IMF dataset (Laeven and Valencia 2012). We
show them here if we coded them as 1 for at least one of the EU countries. Details on historical EU reforms
as reported in columns 2 to 4.
43
Table 2: Financial crises, economic policies and CBI power
banking crisist−1
All independent states
(excluding EMU years)
1950-2010
6.31
6.89
8.97
(3.97) (5.60) (6.68)
All independent states
EMU states
(excluding EMU states)
1993-2010
1993-2010
13.5+
14.6
15.4+
0.19
-0.13
0.65
(7.21) (9.06) (9.53) (0.56) (0.60) (1.24)
high debtt−1
0.65
(0.48)
0.18
(0.70)
0.12
(1.45)
-0.99
(2.05)
2.13∗∗
(0.79)
1.45
(1.55)
banking crisist−1 *
high debtt−1
-1.04
(7.94)
-1.04
(9.62)
-2.34
(14.5)
6.31
(15.7)
0
(0.00)
0
(0.00)
inflationt−1
0.012
(0.015)
0.003
(0.013)
-0.18
(0.13)
government ideology
0.11
(0.28)
0.22
(0.56)
0.49
(0.86)
-0.42 -0.73
-2.02
-0.36 3.72+
5.04
-0.76 -2.88∗∗
(0.85) (0.75) (2.37) (1.62) (2.13) (3.57) (0.61) (0.57)
N
904
793
390
226
220
195
199
199
Countries
25
25
25
15
15
15
15
15
R2 within
0.14
0.14
0.16
0.17
0.17
0.19
0.18
0.18
R2
0.17
0.17
0.19
0.19
0.19
0.21
0.19
0.19
SE clustered on countries in parentheses. Country and time fixed effects not reported.
Pooled OLS regressions. Dependent variable is Change in CBI.
+
p < 0.1, ∗ p < 0.05, ∗∗ p < 0.01
constant
44
16.5
(13.9)
189
13
0.19
0.21
Table 3: Financial crises, economic policies and parliaments’ power
All independent states
(excluding EMU years)
1950-2010
-0.043∗ -0.064∗∗ -0.092∗∗
(0.018) (0.021) (0.020)
All independent states
(excluding EMU states)
1993-2010
-0.044 -0.084∗∗ -0.089∗∗
(0.027) (0.017) (0.025)
1.ldebt di
-0.004
(0.026)
0.009
(0.037)
-0.016
(0.088)
0.032
(0.091)
0.021
(0.051)
0.032
(0.044)
banking crisist−1 *
0.041
(0.033)
0.076∗
(0.032)
0.091∗
(0.041)
0.110∗
(0.055)
0
(0.00)
0
(0.00)
1.startsysbankclag1
EMU states
-0.022
(0.035)
1993-2010
-0.026 -0.048
(0.036) (0.047)
inflationt−1
0.001
(0.000)
0.001+
(0.001)
0.003
(0.002)
government ideology
-0.001
(0.005)
0.001
(0.009)
-0.007
(0.011)
-0.080∗∗ -0.075∗∗
-0.11
0.025
-0.044
0.01
0.035+
0.014
(0.020) (0.029) (0.073) (0.023) (0.087)
(0.00) (0.018) (0.056)
N
501
491
313
191
188
168
199
199
Countries
23
23
23
14
14
14
15
15
R2 within
0.35
0.38
0.42
0.39
0.43
0.44
0.16
0.16
R2
0.38
0.41
0.45
0.41
0.44
0.46
0.19
0.19
SE clustered on countries in parentheses. Country and time fixed effects not reported.
Pooled OLS regressions. Dependent variable is Change in Oversight Institutions.
+
p < 0.1, ∗ p < 0.05, ∗∗ p < 0.01
constant
45
-0.38
(0.31)
189
13
0.18
0.20
Online Appendix
Smoke with Fire: Financial Crises, Institutional
Reform, and the Future of EU Democracy
1.
Appendix Figures
– Descriptive Plots
– Marginal Effect Plots
2. Appendix Tables
– Robustness Tests
3. Supplementary Material
– Global Cross–National Analyses
1
1960
1980
1960
1980
Debt to GDP (%)
2000
2000
Slovenia
Slovak Republic
Hungary
Greece
Netherlands
Estonia
Denmark
Lithuania
Belgium
Austria
1980
2000
Banking Crisis
Years
1960
Spain
Poland
Ireland
Finland
Bulgaria
1960
1980
Sweden
Portugal
Italy
France
Cyprus
2000
1960
1980
2000
United Kingdom
Romania
Latvia
Germany
Czech Republic
Democratization
Figure A.1: Banking crises, debt and political transitions in EU 25 countries
Data sources: banking crises are coded following Laeven and Valencia (2008), and include border line crises and the updated crises in Laeven and Valencia
(2012); debt comes from Abbas et al (2011); democratization is a binary indicator based on a 4–point positive change in the Polity IV index.
Debt to GDP
100 200
0
100 200
0
100 200
0
100 200
0
100 200
0
2
Debt to GDP
Debt to GDP
50 100 150 200
Debt to GDP
Banking crisis
Change in CBI
Banking crisis
Change in CBI
196019802000
Years
Cyprus
Debt to GDP
196019802000
Years
Spain
Change in CBI
Banking crisis
Banking crisis
Change in CBI
Debt to GDP
196019802000
Years
Greece
Debt to GDP
196019802000
Years
Belgium
EMU countries
Debt to GDP
Debt to GDP
50 100 150 200
Change in CBI
Banking crisis
Debt to GDP
1960 19802000
Years
UK
Change in CBI
Banking crisis
Debt to GDP
1960 19802000
Years
Sweden
Change in CBI
Banking crisis
Debt to GDP
19601980 2000
Years
Poland
Change in CBI
Banking crisis
Debt to GDP
19601980 2000
Years
Bulgaria
Non EMU countries
Figure A.2: Distribution of crises, debt and change of CBI across EMU and non–EMU countries: selected countries
-20 0 20 40 60 80
change in CBI
-20 0 20 40 60 80
change in CBI
0
50 100 150 200
0
Debt to GDP
Debt to GDP
50 100 150 200
0
50 100 150 200
0
-20 0 20 40 60 80
change in CBI
-20 0 20 40 60 80
change in CBI
-20 0 20 40 60 80
change in CBI
-20 0 20 40 60 80
change in CBI
0
50 100 150 200
0
Debt to GDP
Debt to GDP
50 100 150 200
0
50 100 150 200
0
-20 0 20 40 60 80
change in CBI
-20 0 20 40 60 80
change in CBI
3
Debt to GDP
Debt to GDP
50 100 150 200
Banking crisis
Banking crisis
Banking crisis
Banking crisis
Change in oversight of EU
Banking crisis
Change in oversight of EU
Change in oversight of EU
Debt to GDP
Debt to GDP
Debt to GDP
1960 19802000
Years
UK
196019802000
Years
Cyprus
Change in oversight of EU
Banking crisis
Debt to GDP
1960 19802000
Years
Sweden
Change in oversight of EU
Banking crisis
Debt to GDP
19601980 2000
Years
Poland
Change in oversight of EU
Banking crisis
Debt to GDP
19601980 2000
Years
Bulgaria
Non EMU countries
196019802000
Years
Spain
Change in oversight of EU
Debt to GDP
Debt to GDP
Change in oversight of EU
196019802000
Years
Greece
196019802000
Years
Belgium
EMU countries
Debt to GDP
Debt to GDP
50 100 150 200
Figure A.3: Distribution of crises, debt and change of oversight across EMU and non–EMU countries: selected countries
-.4
0
.4
.8
Change in oversight of EU
-.4
0
.4
.8
Change in oversight of EU
0
50 100 150 200
0
Debt to GDP
Debt to GDP
50 100 150 200
0
50 100 150 200
0
-.4
0
.4
.8
Change in oversight of EU
-.4
0
.4
.8
Change in oversight of EU
-.4
0
.4
.8
Change in oversight of EU
-.4
0
.4
.8
Change in oversight of EU
0
50 100 150 200
0
Debt to GDP
Debt to GDP
50 100 150 200
0
50 100 150 200
0
-.4
0
.4
.8
Change in oversight of EU
-.4
0
.4
.8
Change in oversight of EU
4
Figure A.4: Marginal effects
Linear Prediction
5
15
25
Effect of Banking Crisis on CBI change
-5
0
0
1
Banking crisis
-.05
Linear Prediction
0
.05
.1
Effect of Banking Crisis on EU oversight change
0
1
Banking crisis
Plots are based on full models with covariates. Dashed line indicate the zero line. Solid lines indicate the
95% confidence intervals.
5
Figure A.5: Marginal effects of crises on outcomes of interest
Effect of banking crisis on CBI as debt changes
100
Marginal effect of crisis on CBI (0−100%)
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
0
20
40
60
80
100
120
140
debt
Effect of banking crisis on EU oversight as debt changes
Marginal effect of crisis on EU Oversight index
2.5
2.0
1.5
1.0
0.5
0
20
40
60
80
100
120
140
debt
Plots are based on full models with covariates. Grey area indicates the 95% confidence intervals.
6
Table A.1: Financial crises and CBI change: additional controls
banking crisist−1
Monetarily independent states Monetarily independent states
(excluding EMU years)
(excluding EMU states)
1950-2010
1993-2010
(1)
(2)
(3)
(4)
7.62+
9.25
19.8∗
15.9+
(4.51)
(6.46)
(9.53)
(9.76)
EMU states
1993-2010
(5)
(6)
0.01
0.01
(0.00) (0.00)
high debtt−1
0.49
(0.60)
5.32+
(2.88)
56.4
(51.29)
banking crisist−1 *
high debtt−1
-1.09
(9.32)
18.3
(11.3)
0.01
(0.00)
inflationt−1
-0.030
(0.066)
-0.014
(0.14)
-5.87∗∗
(1.97)
government ideology
0.20
(0.33)
0.79
(1.43)
0.48
(1.84)
GDP p.c.t−1
-0.26
(1.35)
-5.04
(4.31)
-18.0
(11.8)
-12.3
(18.5)
28.5
(34.7)
58.3∗
(29.0)
trade opennesst−1
2.89∗
(1.43)
8.37+
(4.71)
0.33
(8.93)
0.28
(10.5)
-32.3
(77.7)
-14.0
(38.5)
0
0
-142.7
(0.00)
(0.00)
(551.4)
91
85
73
14
14
11
0.27
0.31
0.15
0.32
0.36
0.19
time fixed effects not reported.
0
(0.00)
72
11
0.40
0.42
constant
-9.32
17.1
(13.4)
(53.1)
N
746
279
Countries
24
24
R2 within
0.17
0.22
R2
0.20
0.27
SE clustered on countries in parentheses. Country and
+
p < 0.1, ∗ p < 0.05, ∗∗ p < 0.01
7
Table A.2: Financial crises and change of oversight institutions: additional controls
banking crisist−1
Monetarily independent states
(excluding EMU years)
1950-2010
(1)
(2)
-0.065∗
-0.094∗∗
(0.027)
(0.033)
Monetarily independent states
EMU states
(excluding EMU states)
1993-2010
1993-2010
(3)
(4)
(5)
(6)
-0.067
-0.073
0
0
(0.059)
(0.051)
(0.00) (0.00)
high debtt−1
-0.010
(0.020)
-0.050
(0.045)
-11.4
(12.1)
banking crisist−1 *
high debtt−1
0.028
(0.031)
0.12
(0.091)
0
(0.00)
inflationt−1
-0.000
(0.000)
0.001
(0.001)
0.047
(0.036)
government ideology
-0.004
(0.006)
-0.005
(0.027)
-0.001
(0.025)
GDP p.c.
t−1
trade openness
t−1
-0.11
(0.11)
-0.13
(0.12)
0.35
(0.58)
0.36
(0.53)
0.45
(0.42)
0.35
(0.49)
0.058
(0.048)
0.050
(0.079)
-0.054
(0.29)
-0.068
(0.31)
0.67
(1.44)
0.71
(1.20)
0
0
-7.57
(0.00)
(0.00)
(10.5)
68
67
73
13
13
11
0.32
0.34
0.21
0.38
0.40
0.28
time fixed effects not reported.
0
(0.00)
72
11
0.29
0.35
constant
0.81
1.07
(1.10)
(1.12)
N
366
212
Countries
22
22
R2 within
0.20
0.25
R2
0.24
0.30
SE clustered on countries in parentheses. Country and
+
p < 0.1, ∗ p < 0.05, ∗∗ p < 0.01
8
Table A.3: Financial Crises and Change in CBI: subsamples
banking crisist−1
All states
All states
(EMU and non–EMU included) (EMU and non–EMU included)
1950–2010
1993-2010
(1)
(2)
(3)
(4)
(5)
(6)
3.66
6.41
8.22
5.92
13.6
14.3
(2.66) (5.28)
(6.16)
(3.65) (9.07)
(8.75)
EMU states
(all accession years)
1990-2010
(7)
(8)
(9)
0.51
0.95
1.36
(0.39) (0.77) (0.91)
high debtt−1
0.14
(0.65)
-0.19
(0.99)
1.77+
(0.98)
1.48
(1.07)
-3.22 -3.87
(5.23) (5.60)
banking crisist−1 *
high debtt−1
-4.05
(6.11)
-5.20
(7.19)
-10.3
(9.96)
-10.3
(10.1)
0
0
(0.00) (0.00)
inflationt−1
0.020
(0.015)
0.011
(0.018)
-0.12
(0.13)
government ideology
0.29
(0.27)
0.53
(0.45)
0.48
(0.72)
-0.84 -0.71
-4.55∗
-1.75+ -2.89∗∗
-5.39+
(0.59) (0.77)
(2.12)
(0.96) (0.99)
(2.83)
N
1113
1002
589
425
419
384
Countries
25
25
25
25
25
25
R2 within
0.10
0.10
0.093
0.084
0.094
0.099
R2
0.11
0.11
0.10
0.10
0.11
0.12
SE clustered on countries in parentheses. Country and time fixed effects not reported.
+
p < 0.1, ∗ p < 0.05, ∗∗ p < 0.01
constant
9
-1.45∗∗
(0.46)
209
15
0.17
0.17
1.79
(5.26)
209
15
0.17
0.18
15.3
(17.0)
199
13
0.18
0.18
Table A.4: Financial Crises and Change in Oversight Institutions: subsamples
banking crisist−1
All states
All states
EMU states
(EMU and non–EMU included) (EMU and non–EMU included)
(all accession years)
1950–2010
1993-2010
1990-2010
(1)
(2)
(3)
(4)
(5)
(6)
(7)
(8)
(9)
-0.021 -0.068∗∗
-0.11∗∗
-0.021 -0.092∗∗
-0.099∗∗
-0.025 -0.028 -0.052
(0.015) (0.024)
(0.018)
(0.017) (0.015)
(0.021)
(0.035) (0.036) (0.049)
high debtt−1
0.010
(0.020)
0.021
(0.025)
0.024
(0.053)
0.057
(0.050)
0.022
(0.058)
0.038
(0.055)
banking crisist−1 *
high debtt−1
0.062+
(0.033)
0.089∗∗
(0.028)
0.091∗∗
(0.029)
0.084∗
(0.039)
0.00
(0.00)
0.00
(0.00)
inflationt−1
0.001∗
(0.000)
0.002∗∗
(0.001)
0.004
(0.002)
government ideology
-0.003
(0.004)
-0.003
(0.007)
-0.011
(0.010)
-0.003
-0.018
-0.097
0.007
-0.022
-0.22∗
(0.009) (0.025)
(0.064)
(0.010) (0.055)
(0.091)
Obs
710
700
512
390
387
357
Countries
24
24
24
24
24
24
R2 within
0.18
0.19
0.20
0.19
0.20
0.21
R2
0.21
0.21
0.23
0.22
0.22
0.24
SE clustered on countries in parentheses. Country and time fixed effects not reported.
+
p < 0.1, ∗ p < 0.05, ∗∗ p < 0.01
constant
10
0.031+
(0.018)
209
15
0.15
0.17
0.009
(0.065)
209
15
0.15
0.17
-0.41
(0.31)
199
13
0.17
0.19
Table A.5: Financial Crises and Change in CBI: Population–averaged Estimation
banking crisist−1
All states
Monetarily independent states
(EMU and non–EMU included)
(excluding EMU)
1950–2010
1993–2010
(1)
(2)
(3)
(4)
(5)
(6)
3.552
7.356
8.240
12.51+ 14.11+
13.67+
(2.542) (5.035)
(5.716)
(6.841) (7.808)
(7.546)
high debtt−1
0.950∗∗
(0.363)
0.550
(0.557)
1.082
(0.797)
0.654
(0.800)
banking crisist−1 *
high debtt−1
-5.831
(5.688)
-6.907
(6.522)
-3.416
(13.55)
3.006
(16.07)
inflationt−1
0.002
(0.006)
-0.011
(0.013)
government ideology
0.316+
(0.161)
0.333
(0.346)
0.698∗∗
0.310
0.0227
1.654∗∗ 1.225∗
(0.0935) (0.261)
(0.844)
(0.399) (0.538)
Obs
1113
1002
589
226
220
Countries
25
25
25
15
15
χ2
1.952
10.36
8.677
3.345
6.409
Robust SE in parentheses. Country and time fixed effects not reported.
+
p < 0.1, ∗ p < 0.05, ∗∗ p < 0.01
constant
11
1.718
(1.732)
195
15
7.101
Table A.6: Financial Crises and Change in Oversight Institutions: Population–averaged
Estimation
banking crisist−1
All states
Monetarily independent states
(EMU and non–EMU included)
(excluding EMU)
1950–2010
1993–2010
(1)
(2)
(3)
(4)
(5)
(6)
-0.036∗∗ -0.048∗∗
-0.052∗∗
-0.070∗∗ -0.085∗∗
-0.075∗∗
(0.005) (0.009)
(0.012)
(0.010) (0.014)
(0.021)
high debtt−1
-0.012
(0.013)
-0.018
(0.015)
-0.031
(0.026)
-0.024
(0.036)
banking crisist−1 *
high debtt−1
0.005
(0.012)
0.004
(0.015)
0.031
(0.026)
0.042
(0.035)
government ideology
-0.001
(0.001)
-0.001
(0.011)
inflationt−1
0.001∗∗
(0.000)
0.001
(0.001)
0.036∗∗ 0.052∗∗
0.027
0.070∗∗
0.08∗∗
(0.005) (0.010)
(0.017)
(0.010) (0.014)
Obs
710
460
512
191
188
Countries
24
24
24
14
14
χ2
51.12
51.37
58.25
47.15
72.34
Robust SE in parentheses. Country and time fixed effects not reported.
+
p < 0.1, ∗ p < 0.05, ∗∗ p < 0.01
constant
12
0.041
(0.063)
168
14
71.92
Table A.7: Financial Crises and Change in Oversight Institutions: Alternative Index
banking crisist−1
Monetarily independent states
(excluding EMU years)
1950–2010
(1)
(2)
(3)
-0.055∗∗ -0.093∗∗
-0.143∗∗
(0.018) (0.031)
(0.020)
Monetarily independent states
EMU states
(excluding EMU states)
1993–2010
1993–2010
(4)
(5)
(6)
(7)
(8)
(9)
-0.053 -0.103∗∗
-0.098∗∗
-0.018 -0.018 -0.048
(0.040) (0.023)
(0.032)
(0.029) (0.031) (0.049)
high debtt−1
0.019
(0.035)
0.035
(0.049)
0.028
(0.152)
0.102
(0.180)
0.001
(0.087)
0.018
(0.078)
banking crisist−1 *
high debtt−1
0.020
(0.036)
0.035
(0.029)
0.111+
(0.057)
0.164
(0.122)
0.00
(0.00)
0.00
(0.00)
inflationt−1
0.002∗∗
(0.000)
0.003∗∗
(0.001)
0.005
(0.003)
government ideology
-0.002
(0.008)
0.003
(0.020)
-0.005
(0.016)
-0.006
-0.034
-0.229∗
(0.015) (0.043)
(0.112)
Obs
710
700
512
Countries
24
24
24
R2 (within)
0.175
0.182
0.187
R2
0.199
0.206
0.216
SE clustered on countries in parentheses. Country and
+
p < 0.1, ∗ p < 0.05, ∗∗ p < 0.01
constant
13
0.063+
-0.144
(0.036) (0.160)
191
188
14
14
0.389
0.424
0.401
0.435
time fixed effects not
0
0.061∗∗
(0.00)
(0.022)
168
199
14
15
0.429
0.138
0.443
0.164
reported.
0.060
(0.094)
199
15
0.138
0.164
-0.534
(0.461)
189
13
0.152
0.176
Table A.8: Financial Crises and Change in Oversight Institutions: Tobit Models
banking crisist−1
Monetarily independent states
(excluding EMU years)
1950–2010
(1)
(2)
(3)
-0.043∗ -0.064∗∗
-0.092∗∗
(0.014) (0.023)
(0.0168)
Monetarily independent states
EMU states
(excluding EMU states)
1993–2010
1993–2010
(4)
(5)
(6)
(7)
(8)
(9)
-0.044+ -0.084∗∗
-0.089∗∗
-0.022 -0.025 -0.048
(0.025) (0.015)
(0.022)
(0.032) (0.032) (0.043)
high debtt−1
0.010
(0.019)
0.020
(0.024)
-0.016
(0.080)
0.032
(0.081)
banking crisist−1 *
high debtt−1
0.061∗
(0.030)
0.089∗∗
(0.026)
0.090∗
(0.037)
0.113∗
(0.048)
0.0210
(0.046)
0.032
(0.040)
inflationt−1
0.001∗
(0.001)
0.001∗
(0.001)
0.003
(0.002)
government ideology
-0.003
(0.004)
0.001
(0.008)
-0.007
(0.009)
constant
-0.003
-0.018
-0.097
(0.00) (0.0212)
(0.061)
σ
0.139∗∗ 0.139∗∗
0.154∗∗
(0.007) (0.007)
(0.017)
Obs
710
700
512
Countries
24
24
24
Log-Likelihood
393.6
386.4
227.1
SE clustered on countries in parentheses. Country and
+
p < 0.1, ∗ p < 0.05, ∗∗ p < 0.01
14
-0.067∗∗ -0.064
(0.013) (0.067)
0.170∗∗ 0.166∗∗
(0.016) (0.017)
191
188
14
14
67.22
70.57
time fixed effects not
-0.229∗
0.034∗ 0.0135 -0.380
(0.094)
(0.016) (0.052) (0.284)
0.171∗∗
0.150∗∗ 0.150∗∗ 0.152∗∗
(0.018)
(0.034) (0.034) (0.033)
168
199
199
189
14
15
15
13
58.42
92.11
92.19
84.49
reported.
15
0.026
(0.656)
1.082
(1.376)
constant
1.389
1.358
-0.073
-0.0979+
(2.044)
(1.993)
(2.364)
(0.0573)
Obs
725
715
203
710
χ2
534.3
414.3
59.27
90.89
SE clustered on countries in parentheses. Country and time fixed effects not reported.
+
p < 0.1, ∗ p < 0.05, ∗∗ p < 0.01
high debtt−1
banking crisist−1
-0.102+
(0.0576)
700
695.8
0.005
(0.020)
-0.0991
(0.0868)
188
3278.3
-0.027
(0.082)
CBI ∆
Oversight Institutions ∆
All states
Monetarily independent states
All states
All independent states
(EMU and non–EMU included)
(excluding EMU)
(EMU and non–EMU included)
(excluding EMU)
1950–2010
1993–2010
1950–2010
1993–2010
(1)
(2)
(3)
(4)
(5)
(6)
-11.13
-11.17
-12.48
0.396∗
0.387∗
0.347+
(8.873)
(8.677)
(20.92)
(0.183)
(0.186)
(0.195)
Table A.9: Financial Crises: Instrumental Variable Estimation
Table A.10: Financial crises and Change in CBI: Currency Crises
currency crisist−1
high debtt−1
currency crisist−1 *
high debtt−1
All states
Monetarily independent states
EMU states
(EMU and non–EMU included)
(excluding EMU states)
1950–2010
1993–2010
1993–2010
(1)
(2)
(3)
(4)
(5)
(6)
(7)
(8)
(9)
1.845
-1.685
-1.472
8.363 -9.155∗
-9.859∗
-18.28 -18.88+ -16.87+
(4.603) (2.14)
(1.76)
(11.89) (4.46)
(4.72)
(11.41) (11.40) (9.74)
0.038
-0.302
-0.0420
-0.0781
2.560∗∗
1.998
(0.66)
(1.00)
(1.31)
(1.44)
(0.92)
(1.72)
6.562
(8.606)
6.313
(9.037)
26.02+
(13.70)
27.29∗
(13.69)
0.00
(0.00)
0.00
(0.00)
inflationt−1
0.016
(0.013)
-0.007
(0.015)
-0.147
(0.116)
government ideology
0.293
(0.265)
0.363
(0.579)
0.423
(0.839)
constant
-0.076 -0.185
-3.172
0.808
(0.186) (0.527)
(2.207)
(0.705)
Obs
1113
1002
589
226
Countries
25
25
25
15
R2 (within)
0.0963 0.0981
0.0862
0.116
R2
0.102
0.107
0.0967
0.142
SE clustered on countries in parentheses. Country and time fixed
+
p < 0.1, ∗ p < 0.05, ∗∗ p < 0.01
16
4.850∗
5.580
(2.062)
(3.427)
220
195
15
15
0.144
0.143
0.170
0.172
effects not reported.
-0.799
(0.592)
199
15
0.192
0.207
-3.485∗∗
(0.945)
199
15
0.195
0.210
12.52
(13.04)
189
13
0.203
0.218
Table A.11: Financial Crises and Change in Oversight Institutions: Currency Crises
currency crisistt−1
All states
(EMU and non–EMU
1950–2010
(1)
(2)
0.331
0.107+
(0.220) (0.059)
included)
(3)
-1.472
(1.76)
Monetarily independent states
EMU states
(excluding EMU states)
1993–2010
1993–2010
(4)
(5)
(6)
(7)
(8)
(9)
0.274
0.269
0.355+
1.636∗∗ 1.640∗∗ 1.637∗∗
(0.28) (0.258)
(0.198)
(0.072) (0.073) (0.076)
high debtt−1
0.012
(0.023)
-0.302
(1.00)
-0.025
(0.086)
0.028
(0.081)
-0.019
(0.019)
-0.019
(0.021)
currency crisistt−1 *
high debtt−1
0.355
(0.248)
6.313
(9.03)
0.00
(0.00)
0.00
(0.00)
0.00
(0.00)
0.00
(0.00)
inflationt−1
0.002∗
(0.001)
0.016
(0.013)
0.002∗
(0.001)
0.001
(0.001)
government ideology
-0.003
(0.003)
0.293
(0.265)
0.004
(0.008)
-0.001
(0.004)
-0.005 -0.187+
-3.172
0.025
(0.008) (0.097)
(2.207)
(0.024)
Obs
710
512
589
191
Countries
24
24
25
14
R2 (within)
0.218
0.253
0.0862
0.406
R2
0.242
0.281
0.0967
0.420
SE clustered on countries in parentheses. Country and time fixed
+
p < 0.1, ∗ p < 0.05, ∗∗ p < 0.01
constant
17
-0.008
0.00
(0.082)
(0.00)
188
168
14
14
0.441
0.459
0.453
0.475
effects not reported.
0.036∗∗
(0.006)
199
15
0.591
0.602
0.057∗∗
(0.018)
199
15
0.591
0.603
0.006
(0.120)
189
13
0.596
0.606
Supplementary Material
Crises, CBI and Democracy in Global Cross–National Perspective
Our theory is tailored to the supranational entity that is the European Union. As such,
we do not expect our theories to guide explanations for monetary policies and delegation
mechanisms across all countries. Nonetheless, we believe the tension between economic
independence and democracy is not as stark as it is thought to be also in polities outside of
the EU. To substantiate and validate the theory, we then ran further analyses based on the
global dataset of 182 countries identified by Laeven and Valencia (2008, 2012), who measure
debt, banking and currency crises from 1950 until 2010.38
We used the same sources to construct the change of CBI variable for the global sample
(Bodea and Hicks 2014; Sadeh). Of course, since we do not possess refined information
on political delegation, we rely on the coarser measure of democracy as measured by the
Polity IV score. We construct a binary variable that takes the value of 1 if the score changes
positively by three or more points from one year to another.39 As per debt, we generate
more variation in the Abbas et al (2011) measure by cumulating countries’ five-year debt
levels, therefore constructing an ‘aggregate’ debt level variable. The baseline estimation
strategies are two–way fixed effect linear models with country–clustered standard errors for
the CBI change outcome, and a two–way fixed effect probit models for the polity change
(democratization) outcome, but we also explore other specifications (e.g. GEE models) that
confirm our general inferences.
Our global findings shed important light on the mechanism that we identified for the
EU. We find that banking crises increase the power of economic agents like central banks
(Figure B.1). Contrarily to the European findings, however, we find that high debt is also
conducive to power delegation to these technocratic actors. We also find that two interacting
symptoms of financial stress have a positive effect. No country with a cumulated debt
exceeding 100 percent of GDP (i.e. 500 percent of the five–year accumulated debt to GDP)
has historically decreased the autonomy of the national central bank. By contrast, Bulgaria
(1998) or Chile (1990) – like Italy in 1994 – increased the independence of their national
banks in sovereign debt crises of a similar magnitude. Figure B.2 shows that the relationship
between debt and CBI is rather involved. More specifically, the positive relationship between
the cumulated debt indicator and the central bank independence measure only holds for the
countries which are in a strong, but not yet extreme sovereign debt crisis where the cumulated
debt of five years approaches or surpasses 1000 percent of the five–year cumulated GDP.
A similar relationship holds, as subfigure b reveals, for the interaction between debt and
banking crisis.
The analysis of democratization also shows some important findings. In our dataset,
we identify 161 instances of democratization, such as Argentina 1973, Peru 1956, beside
the European cases already discussed.40 Here we study the effect of currency crises as
well, as we are agnostic about the differences that banking and currency crises should have
across the heterogenous groups of independent states in the global sample. We find that
38
Our outcome variables for the global datasets extend to 2010, but note that many of our covariates are
only available up to 2007.
39
We co–validated our findings with the Bormann and Golder index of democracy (2013). Also, the results
are just marginally weaker if we consider a change by the threshold of four points.
40
Furthermore, we observe 98 autocratizations (e.g. Belarus 1995, Haiti 1991, Congo 1997).
18
the predicted coefficients of lagged crises tend to be higher than 1 (Figure B.3).41 The
statistical significance indicates that, although weakly, financial crises have usually had a
positive impact on the chance of democratization. Our results additionally indicate that
high sovereign debt has a positive role to play in democratization processes (Figure B.4).
In the global sample, there is not a single case of a country that became more autocratic
after experiencing five years with a significantly expansive fiscal policy (>100 percent yearly
debt through GDP ratio). There are, however, several countries which underwent political
liberalization under the same condition, e.g. Chile 1990, Guyana 1992, Hungary, 1990, and
Sierra Leone 1996.
41
In separate autocratization regressions, we find that the results are generally null. Results are available
upon request.
19
Table B.1: Selected CBI changes and regime change in global sample
CBI loss (< 20)
Democratization
(Polity change > +3)
Spain
Spain
Spain
Spain
1975
1976
1977
1978
CBI gain (> 51)
Armenia 1998
Djibouti 1999
Greece 1974
Guatemala 1986
Mexico 1994
Peru 1993
Peru 2000
Table B.2: Selected CBI changes and banking crises in the global sample
Banking crisis
No banking crisis
CBI loss (< 20)
Costa Rica 1996
Finland 1994
Austria 1972
Egypt 1972
France 1972
Portugal 2002
Singapore 2000
20
CBI gain (> 51)
Armenia 1997
Estonia 1995
Georgia 1995
Bosnia Hzg 1998
France 1994
Table B.3: Selected historical banking crises by regime change
Autocratization
Albania 1996
Algeria 1992
Armenia 1995
Armenia 1996
Burundi 1996
Belarus 1995
Belarus 1996
Chad 1984
Guinea Bissau 1998
Zambia 1996
21
Democratization
Albania 1997
Argentina 1983
Armenia 1998
Bangladesh 1991
Congo 1992
DRC 1992
Croatia 1999
Benin 1990
Indonesia 1999
Madagascar 1991
Jordan 1989
Mali 1991
Mexico 1994
Nepal 1990
Nicaragua 1990
Panama 1989
Philippines 1986
Romania 1990
Spain 1977
Spain 1978
Turkey 1983
Uruguay 1985
Figure B.1: Impact of financial crises on change in CBI, global sample
Country-specific models (DID)
Population-averaged models (GEE)
banking crisis
debt (high)
banking crisis*debt
-5
0
5
10
15
-5
0
5
10
15
Pr(Change in CBI)
Crisis
Crisis*Debt
Crisis+Covariates
The plots show the linear coefficients of pooled OLS regressions of CBI changes on our main measures of
financial stress. Each set of models presents, on the left side, the difference–in–differences models and, on
the right side, the population–averaged models. Covariates are lagged inflation and government ideology.
Line segments are 90 percent confidence intervals.
22
Figure B.2: Marginal effects of crises on change in CBI, global sample
Marginal effects are simulated values constructed with linear spline at 20 different knots of the distribution
of cumulated debt (5-year sum of debt to GDP ratio).
23
1. Fixed Effects
high cumulated debt onset
banking crisis
currency crisis
banking crisis*high debt onset
currency crisis*high debt onset
banking*currency crisis
.5
1
1.5
2
0
1
2
3
2. Fixed Effects + Controls
high cumulated debt onset
banking crisis
currency crisis
banking crisis*high debt onset
currency crisis*high debt onset
Figure banking*currency
B.3: Correlational
analysis of economic crises and democratization, global sample
crisis
1
1.2
1.4
1.6
1.8
0
1
2
3
3. Fixed Effects (listwise deletion on debt)
high debt
banking crisis
currency crisis
banking crisis*high debt
currency crisis*high debt
banking*currency crisis
1
1.2
1.4
1.6
1.8
0
1
2
3
Change in Pr(Democratization)
The plots show the exponentiated coefficients (odds ratios) of population-averaged probit regressions of
polity score changes on different measures of financial stress. Each set of models presents, on the left side,
the univariate models and, on the right side, the models with interaction effects. For the latter, coefficients
plotted in the same shape represent the variables of each respective interaction model. Line segments are
95 percent confidence intervals
24
Figure B.4: Joint effects of debt and banking crises on democratization, global sample
Effect of banking crisis on democratization given cumulated debt
0.5
Pr(demo=1)
0.4
0.3
0.2
0.1
0.0
0
1000
2000
3000
4000
cumulated debt
Plots are based on country–fixed effects probit models run on the global sample (Figure B.3).
25